Renesas Releases its First Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi/Bluetooth LE Combo MCUs for IoT and Connected Home Applications

Renesas Electronics introduced the RA6W1 dual-band Wi-Fi 6 wireless microcontroller (MCU), along with the RA6W2 MCU that integrates both Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth^® Low Energy (LE) technologies. These connectivity devices address the growing demand for always-connected, ultra-low-power IoT devices across smart home, industrial, medical and consumer applications. Renesas also launched fully integrated modules that accelerate development with built-in antennas, wireless protocol stacks, and pre-validated RF connectivity.

Today’s IoT devices must stay always connected to improve application usability and response time, while maintaining the lowest possible power consumption to extend battery life or to meet eco-friendly regulations. Renesas’ Wi-Fi 6 MCUs offer features such as Target Wake Time (TWT), which enables extended sleep times without compromising cloud connectivity and power consumption. This is critical for applications such as environmental sensors, smart locks, thermostats, surveillance cameras, and medical monitors, where real-time control, remote diagnostics and over-the-air (OTA) updates are critical.

Additionally, both MCU Groups are optimized for ultra-low power consumption, consuming as little as 200nA to 4µA in sleep mode and under 50µA in Delivery Traffic Indication Message (DTIM10). With the “sleepy connected” Wi-Fi functionality, these devices stay connected with minimal power draw, meeting the growing requirements of modern energy efficiency standards.

Built on the Arm^® Cortex^®-M33 CPU core running at 160 MHz with 704 KB of SRAM, the MCUs enable engineers to develop cost-effective, standalone IoT applications using integrated communication interfaces and analog peripherals, without the need for an external MCU. Customers also have the option to design with a host MCU that can be selected from Renesas’ broad RA MCU offerings and attach the RA6W1 and RA6W2 as connectivity and networking add-ons (more info).

robenek@dps-az.cz