BG2B Is Coming — and It’s Built for the Next Wave of Bluetooth LE

For more than a decade, Silicon Labs has helped define what low-power Bluetooth LE can look like across multiple generations of connected products.

Our Series 2 BG22 became one of the industry’s most widely adopted low-power Bluetooth LE SoCs by helping customers build reliable, cost-effective connected products at scale. Later, our Series 2 BG27 pushed Bluetooth LE into even smaller form factors, opening the door for tiny, connected health wearables and space-constrained IoT designs. BG24 expanded what customers could do with Bluetooth LE by bringing more compute, machine learning at the edge, and Channel Sounding support into the Bluetooth portfolio.

BG2B is the next step forward.

It builds on that foundation with a new Bluetooth LE platform designed to set a higher bar for battery-powered IoT: lower power, hardware-based security, smartphone-ready distance awareness, and more integration to help customers build capable products without adding unnecessary components or complexity.

That matters because the next wave of Bluetooth LE products is asking for more. Smart tags need better distance awareness across mobile ecosystems. Digital keys and access devices need more confidence that a phone or credential is actually where it claims to be. Electronic shelf labels (ESL) need to run for years, communicate reliably in dense retail deployments, and drive LEDs while keeping hardware simple.

These are different products, but they point to the same shift: Bluetooth LE is no longer just about making devices connect. It is becoming a platform for more capable, more secure, and more integrated battery-powered products.

That is the design point for BG2B.

BG2B: Lowest-Power Bluetooth LE SoC

As Bluetooth LE devices become more capable, battery life cannot become the tradeoff.

That is easy to say and hard to deliver. Every new feature, every radio event, every sensor read, and every moment the processor is awake has an energy cost. For products expected to run for years on a small battery, the real challenge is not just lowering one number on a datasheet, but improving efficiency across the way the device actually operates.

To address this, the BG2B introduces a new Dual Output DC-DC architecture.

In a conventional Single-Output DC-DC, one supply can be generated efficiently, but the core digital logic often still needs to be regulated through a less efficient low-dropout regulator, or LDO. BG2B adds a second DC-DC switching output for the digital logic, allowing both the RF and digital portions of the device to be supplied more efficiently.

That architecture helps reduce conversion losses and is a major reason BG2B is designed to be Silicon Labs’ lowest-power Bluetooth LE SoC to date. With ~1.1 µA EM2 current (16 kB RAM retained), lower MCU active current, and very low Bluetooth LE transmit and receive currents, BG2B helps developers extend battery life while building more capable Bluetooth LE products.

A Complete Bluetooth Channel Sounding Solution

Silicon Labs has been helping customers bring Bluetooth Channel Sounding into real product development since the technology first moved beyond the specification.

With xG24, we moved quickly to bring that work into practical, product-like evaluation, including one of the smallest Channel Sounding development kits available for real product evaluation. Its compact, dual-antenna, coin-cell-compatible form factor gave customers a way to test Channel Sounding in hardware much closer to the key fobs, smart tags, and other compact devices they wanted to build.

That work taught us what matters beyond the specification: antenna design, device orientation, body blocking, reflections, multipath, power, and the gap between a strong demo and a product customers can ship.

BG2B builds on that foundation.

With BG2B, we are focused on delivering a complete Bluetooth Channel Sounding solution, not just checking a standards box. Features such as Mode 3, NADM, and a design ready to support Inline PCT are part of the foundation for secure, accurate, and power-efficient ranging. BG2B is also designed to reduce the time and energy required for Channel Sounding procedures, helping enable faster distance updates without pushing battery-powered products outside their power budgets.

Just as important, BG2B is designed to meet Apple and Google Bluetooth Channel Sounding specifications, giving developers a clearer path to products that work across iOS and Android ecosystems.

And because a real Channel Sounding product needs more than radio support, Silicon Labs is bringing the full development solution around BG2B: a royalty-free distance measurement algorithm, software tools, reference designs, and engineering support to help customers turn ranging capability into real products faster and with less development risk.

More Integration for Real-World Designs

In real-world IoT products, the Bluetooth SoC is rarely the only thing on the board.

A design may need to talk to a wired bus. It may need to drive LEDs. It may need to monitor battery behavior or sample two analog signals at the same time. Each of those requirements can add external components, board area, software work, and cost.

BG2B is designed to pull more of that system into the SoC.

For industrial and commercial vehicle applications, BG2B integrates CAN FD alongside Bluetooth LE. This is important when a Bluetooth-connected device needs access to data on a vehicle or equipment bus for diagnostics, service, fleet workflows, or monitoring. By bringing CAN FD and Bluetooth LE into one SoC, the BG2B can simplify designs that otherwise need additional controller or bridge components to connect the wireless interface to the CAN FD system.

For ESLs and smart retail devices, BG2B builds on Silicon Labs’ broader work in standards-based ESL. Our work with Bluetooth PAwR and large-scale test networks has given us practical insight into what these systems need in the real world: reliable communication in dense retail environments, long battery life, scalable network behavior, and simple hardware for high-volume deployment. BG2B carries those learnings into the device hardware with integrated LED boost and a 4-channel LED sink. These features give compact retail devices a built-in way to support visual alerts, identification, and RGBW-style behavior while reducing external LED driver circuitry, current-setting components, and overall hardware complexity.

BG2B also includes dual 12-bit ADCs, which are useful when two analog signals need to be captured at the same time. A single ADC can measure multiple channels, but it typically does so one after another. That can be fine for slow-changing signals, but it is not ideal when timing matters. With dual ADCs, BG2B can sample two analog signals concurrently, which is useful for applications that need synchronized measurements, phase or timing comparison, or more accurate monitoring of dynamic signals.

The result is a Bluetooth LE platform that helps customers reduce external components and simplify the overall system, not just the wireless portion of the design.

Hardware-Based Security for Connected Products

Connected devices are expected to do more, and they are also expected to be more secure.

A smart lock, digital key, asset tracker, or industrial monitor is not just sending data. It may be proving identity, controlling access, storing credentials, receiving firmware updates, or connecting into a larger system. That makes security part of the product architecture, not something to add at the end.

BG2B will be available with Secure Vault™ High, Silicon Labs’ advanced hardware-based security offering. The goal is to help customers protect the things that matter most: device identity, firmware integrity, cryptographic keys, and sensitive data.

Secure Vault™ High starts with a strong root of trust and secure boot, so the device can verify that only trusted firmware runs. Secure key management helps keep cryptographic keys isolated from application software, while secure debug gives developers a controlled path for field returns or failure analysis. Anti-tamper and differential power analysis (DPA) countermeasures help protect against more advanced local and physical attacks.

Just as important, Secure Vault™ High is implemented as a productized security platform, not a set of features customers have to assemble on their own. The dedicated Secure Engine subsystem provides hardware-enforced isolation for core security services, helping reduce the integration burden on developers and giving customers a stronger foundation as security requirements continue to evolve.

BG2B is also designed for PSA Level 3, helping customers address emerging security expectations and regulations such as the EU Cyber Resilience Act.

The BG2B SoC is Primed for the Next Wave of Bluetooth LE Designs

What makes BG2B exciting is not any single feature on its own, but the way these capabilities come together in one Bluetooth LE platform.

Customers are asking Bluetooth devices to do more: understand distance, protect access, last longer on small batteries, simplify hardware, and interoperate with the phone ecosystems people already use every day. That is a lot to ask from a small, battery-powered device.

BG2B was built for that challenge.

It gives developers a path to secure distance awareness without adding another ranging radio. It advances the low-power foundation that battery-powered IoT depends on. It integrates more of the system into the SoC. And it brings hardware-based security into the next generation of Bluetooth LE products.

The direction is clear: Bluetooth LE is becoming more capable, more secure, and more aware of the physical world around it.

BG2B is Silicon Labs’ next step in helping customers build that future.