Silicon Labs
  • ⟵ Back
    Products
    Featured image
    Lowest-Power Wi-Fi 6 SoC Available: Introducing SiWx917
    WirelessWireless
    Bluetooth
    Wi-Fi
    Thread
    Zigbee
    Multiprotocol
    Proprietary
    Z-Wave
    Xpress
    TechnologyTechnology
    Machine Learning
    Matter
    Security
    Amazon Sidewalk
    Wi-SUN
    Non-WirelessNon-Wireless
    MCUs
    Sensors
    Interface
    Power Management
    ServicesServices
    Custom Part Manufacturing
    Long Term SDK Support
  • ⟵ Back
    Applications
    Featured image
    Watch keynotes, sessions and workshops from Works With ‘22 anytime, anywhere
    Smart HomeSmart Home
    Appliances
    Smart Locks
    LED Lighting
    Switches
    Sensors
    Industrial IoTIndustrial IoT
    Access Control
    Circuit Breakers
    Commercial Lighting
    Electric Submetering
    Human Machine Interface
    Smart HVAC
    Predictive Maintenance
    Smart CitiesSmart Cities
    Battery Storage
    EV Charging Stations
    Smart Buildings
    Smart Metering
    Smart Solar PV System
    Street Lighting
    Smart RetailSmart Retail
    Commercial Lighting
    Direction Finding
    Electronic Shelf Labels
    Loss Prevention
    Connected HealthConnected Health
    Portable Medical Devices
    Smart Hospitals
    Smart Wearable Devices
  • ⟵ Back
    Ecosystems
    Featured image
    First Complete Wireless Development Solution for Amazon Sidewalk
    Ecosystem PartnersEcosystem Partners
    Amazon Sidewalk
    Google Home
  • ⟵ Back
    Resources
    Featured image
    Simplicity Studio 5
    Fast track IoT development
    Developer ToolsDeveloper Tools
    Software Documentation
    Release Notes
    Github
    Technical Library
    Simplicity Studio
    Mobile Apps
    All SDKs
    Development Kits
    Gateways
    RTOS
    Content and TrainingContent and Training
    Tech Talks 2023
    Works With On-Demand
    Blog
    Case Studies
    Whitepapers
    Training Library
    Webinars
    SupportSupport
    Community
    Partner Network
    Channel & Distribution
    Quality and Packaging
    How to Buy
    Submit a Ticket
    Report a Security Issue
  • ⟵ Back
    Company
    Featured image
    Watch keynotes, sessions and workshops from Works With ‘22 anytime, anywhere
    CompanyCompany
    About Us
    Careers
    Management Team
    Board of Directors
    Contact Us
    News & EventsNews & Events
    Blog
    Press Room
    Events
    FinancialsFinancials
    Investor Relations
    Environmental, Social & Governance
    Financial Reports
    OfficesOffices
    India
English
  • English
  • 简体中文
  • 日本語
//
Developers // Bluetooth Low Energy SDK

Bluetooth Low Energy Software Development Kit

With Silicon Labs Bluetooth Low Energy SDK, you can build smooth, reliable, and secure wireless connectivity for your IoT applications. The SDK has your entire product life-cycle covered, from development to over-the-air maintenance. The Silicon Labs simplified stack always contains the latest protocol version, cutting-edge features, and robust security. It works with C-based GCC or IAR compilers and Silicon Labs Simplicity Studio, our intuitive development environment with the most valuable dev toolbox free-of-charge – including an Energy Profiler, Network Analyzer, Pin Tool, visual GATT configurator, and more.

  1. Overview
  2. Downloads
  3. Tech Docs
  4. Community & Support
  1. Overview

Bluetooth Low Energy SDK

The Bluetooth Low Energy Software Development Kit is part of the Silicon Labs GSDK. It consists of an extensive library of example projects, peripheral drivers, the Bluetooth Low Energy protocol stack, and the API.

 

Hardware-agnostic Bluetooth Stack

With Silicon Labs, you have just one proven, hardware-agnostic software stack and API for Bluetooth Low Energy. The single-stack approach speeds up development and radically minimizes Bluetooth SW and HW migration efforts to your new products – it results in a more consistent code and reduces software development and maintenance costs.

 

Bluetooth Low Energy

Keep your products ahead of the competition! Silicon Labs Bluetooth Low Energy stack is in the frontline to support the latest specifications and it delivers all the essential features among the first in the world.

 

Bluetooth Low Energy Software Features and Benefits

Add the most valuable Bluetooth Low Energy features to your IoT applications. Here’s a rundown of all the crucial features on the Silicon Labs stack.

Features   Benefits
Multiprotocol Support on a Single-chip   Dynamic multiprotocol allows you to run Bluetooth, Thread, Zigbee, and Proprietary protocols reliably on one radio, by time-slicing radio operations seamlessly between multiple stacks.
Direction Finding   Silicon Labs Bluetooth Direction Finding is based on the angle of arrival (AoA) and angle of departure (AoD) techniques. It enables high-accuracy positioning of below one meter (<1 m) for your asset tracking and indoor positioning applications – 3-5 times higher accuracy than RSSI.
Apple HomeKit   Develop accessories for the Apple HomeKit ecosystem faster and with lower interoperability risks by building upon the full Apple HomeKit support on our BLE stack – it is available via the Apple MFI license on a wide range of SoCs and modules.
Wi-Fi Coexistence   Are you developing IoT devices with multiple 2.4 GHz protocols such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth? With Silicon Labs’ Wi-Fi Coexistence, you can reduce interference and increase reliability! It is based on packet traffic arbitration (PTA) and allows the Bluetooth device to coordinate transmitting and receiving with the collocated Wi-Fi device.
Long Range   LE Coded PHY (500kbps and 125kbps) enables your Bluetooth devices with up to two times (2X) longer range compared to the 1M PHY modulation – which can correspond to several hundreds of meters. LE Coded PHY improves sensitivity by 4-6 dB, which reduces retransmissions, and increases battery life and connectivity reliability. (SoCs and modules for Long Range: B/MG13, B/MG21, and B/MG22)
High Data Throughput   Our Bluetooth provides the 2M PHY modulation for your high-data throughput IoT applications to unleash a throughput of 1300 kbps on selected SoCs and modules. The 1M PHY delivers a throughput of 700 kbps. (SoCs and modules for 2M PHY: B/MG12, B/MG13, B/MG21, and B/MG22)
Up to 32 Simultaneous Connections   Silicon Labs Bluetooth and Series 2 hardware support 32 simultaneous connections – the high number of connections allows you to connect more nodes per device or base station and reduce the costs of large IoT solutions. Series 1 hardware supports up to 13 simultaneous connections.
Extended Advertisements   The Bluetooth Advertisement Extensions offload the three advertisement channels to allow more capacity for beacons, way-finding, indoor navigation, and asset tracking. The three advertisement channels now only carry pointers to the advertisements, which are transmitted on the 37 data channels. The extended advertisement packet size of up to 1650 bytes is supported, allowing you to fit in more payload.
GATT   Silicon Labs supports all GATT-based Bluetooth profiles and services, including the GATT caching.
GATT Caching   GATT Caching enables your Bluetooth applications a faster client reconnection time and lowers power consumption. It avoids energy-intensive GATT database discovery of a remote device during each connection setup by storing a local copy for future use.
Pairing Processes   Silicon Labs Bluetooth provides you with all the specified pairing processes, including Just Works and Man-in-the-Middle with numeric comparison and Out-of-Band passkey.
Packet Sizes   Higher link layer packet size of up to 251 bytes and ATT protocol packet size of up to 250 bytes allow you to increase data throughput and reduce power consumption (larger packets reduce overhead).
Host Interfaces   Host Network Co-processor (NCP) interfaces include 4-wire UART with RTS/CTS control or 2-wire UART without RTS/CTS GPIOs for sleep and wakeup management.
Memory Options   You can adjust the memory block size for your data and settings. Silicon Labs Bluetooth provides two non-volatile memory options: NVM3 and Persistent Storage (PS) are supported with B/MG1, B/MG12, B/MG13, while NVM3 is supported with B/MG21 and B/MG22.
Flexible Device Roles   No need to hardcode device roles – Silicon Labs Bluetooth runtime supports interchangeable and concurrent roles with the central, peripheral, broadcaster, and observer roles.
Other Features   LE secure connections, LE Privacy 1.2 (peripheral), LE packet length extensions, Whitelisting (central side), LE Power Control, LE Data Length Extensions and LE Dual-topology

Security

Bluetooth Stack Security Features

Your most common threats in wireless communications are passive eavesdropping, Man-In-The-Middle (MITM), and privacy tracking. With Silicon Labs you get all the Bluetooth standard security features to protect your customers’ privacy:

 Pairing — Trusted relationships between devices via secure keys

 Bonding — Stores the keys created during pairing for later connections

 Device Authentication — Verifies that devices have the same keys to protect from MITM

 Encryption — Ensures data confidentiality based on the AES-128 algorithm

 Data signing — Protects against data alteration

Secure Execution Environment

If your IoT application requires security beyond the Bluetooth specification, Silicon Labs hardware supports mbed TLS, a trusted execution environment for Bluetooth applications.



Secure Maintenance Over-the-Air

Maintain your entire installed base via the secure OTA firmware update, which authenticates the update file source, encrypts the process using AES-128, and guarantees an unaltered firmware via the secure boot.

Secure Firmware Updates

Our Secure Gecko Bootloader supports authenticated and AES-128 encrypted software updates via OTA, UART, Secure Boot, flash partitioning, and internal and external SPI for flash.



Hardware Security

In addition to the full range of software security features, your IoT applications will be protected by Silicon Labs hardware security.

BLE Development Tools

Silicon Labs Bluetooth Low Energy SDK uses C programming language, and you can use it with GCC or IAR compilers. For ultimate speed and easiness of development, we recommend our Simplicity Studio, the unified development environment for all Silicon Labs technologies and hardware. 

 

Simplicity Studio

Simplicity Studio provides an intuitive dev experience and the most valuable toolbox free-of-charge.

When you install Simplicity Studio, it automatically customizes your development environment and installs the SDKs based on the target hardware. Everything is wrapped into a single, intuitive, end-to-end dev experience – including Eclipse-based IDE, the correct version of GCC toolchain, Make, Commander, J-Link drivers, energy profiler, network analyzer, PIN tool, GATT configurator, Mesh Configurator, and more. It is the only development tool to download with Silicon Labs.

Show More Show Less
  1. Downloads

Download and Install Simplicity Studio

Get up and running quickly with Bluetooth Low Energy SDKs, precompiled demos, application notes and examples. Use advanced tools including energy profiling and network analysis to optimize your wireless systems. Choose your software package below.

Windows Installer
Mac Installer
Linux Installer
    

GitHub

Silicon Labs wireless IoT SDKs are also available for download on GitHub.


Mobile Apps

EFR Connect

Xpress

  1. Tech Docs

Gecko SDK Release Notes (4.2.0.0)

Latest Release - Q41/2023  (January 2023)

Bluetooth Version 5.0.0.0

  • Bluetooth
    • External bonding database to support infinite number of bondings and key sharing
    • BGAPI event for Bluetooth buffer exhaustion signaling
    • Active scan improvements
    • Three-Wire UART (H5) Transport Layer for HCI (experimental)
    • Certification-Based Authentication and Pairing for High- and Mid-Vault devices (experimental)
  • Multiprotocol
    • Dynamic Multiprotocol Bluetooth and multi-PAN 802.15.4 in RCP mode
    • BLE de-init and re-init for multiprotocol use cases
    • Dynamic Multiprotocol Bluetooth and Zigbee NCP (experimental)

 

Release Date Release Notes
2023 2023/01 Version 4.2.2.0 
2022 2022/12 Version 5.0.0.0 
2022/10 Version 4.2.1.0 
2022/09 Version 4.2.0.0 
2022/08 Version 4.1.0.0 
2022/06 Version 4.0.0.0 
2022/03 Version 3.3.2.0 
2022/01 Version 3.3.1.0 



Bluetooth Location Services Version 5.0.0.0

  • Targeted quality improvements and bug fixes
Release Date Release Notes
2023 2023/01 Version 4.2.2.0 
2022 2022/12 Version 5.0.0.0 
2022/10 Version 4.2.1.0 
2022/09 Version 4.2.0.0 
2022/08 Version 4.1.0.0 
2022/06 Version 4.0.0.0 
2022/03 Version 3.3.2.0 
2022/01 Version 3.3.1.0 



Gecko Platform Version 4.2.0.0

  • Support for EFR32xG25 devices
  • Support for MGM240Dx modules
  • Support for BGM24x modules
  • Improved CPC UART drivers reliability
  • Many CPC improvements
  • Android support for CPCd
  • Security:
    • Updates the Mbed TLS library to version 3.2.1, with support for CBAP
    • Updated ITS driver (version 3) for optimised key look up time
    • Updated software support for TrustZone, Evaluation quality
Release Date Release Notes
2023 2023/01 Version 4.1.4.0 
2022 2022/12 Version 4.2.0.0 
2022/10 Version 4.1.3.0 
2022/09 Version 4.1.2.0 
2022/08 Version 4.1.1.0 
2022/06 Version 4.1.0.0 
2022/03 Version 4.0.2.0 
2022/01 Version 4.0.1.0 

  1. Community & Support

Knowledge Base Articles

Browse our knowledge base articles for information about specific products.

Search Knowledge Base

User Forums

Browse technical questions, share your ideas, and learn more about our latest solutions.

Search the Forums

Still need help?

Contact technical support or review a case.

Request Support
Silicon Labs
Stay Connected With Us
Plug into the latest on Silicon Labs products, including product releases and resources, documentation updates, PCN notifications, upcoming events, and more.
  • About Us
  • Careers
  • Community
  • Contact Us
  • Cookies
  • Corporate Responsibility
  • Investor Relations
  • Press Room
  • Privacy and Terms
  • Site Feedback
Note: This content may contain offensive terminology that is now obsolete. Silicon Labs is replacing these terms with inclusive language wherever possible. for more information, visit our webpage.
Copyright © Silicon Laboratories. All rights reserved.
粤ICP备15107361号
Also of Interest:
  • Bluetooth modules
  • SLWSTK6101D
  • Bluetooth Mesh Software Development Kit

Your File Will Start Downloading Shortly

Thank you for downloading .

If you have any issues downloading, please contact sales support or product technical support.

Close
Loading Results
Close

Please select at least one column.