Renesas RA2L1 ultralow-power MCUs

Renesas Electronics’ RA2L1 group of microcontrollers (MCUs) uses the Arm Cortex-M23 core operating up to 48 MHz. They are suitable for home appliance, industrial and building automation, medical and healthcare, and consumer human–machine interface (HMI) IoT applications.

The general-purpose MCUs are designed for ultralow-power consumption, with integrated features including capacitive touch sensing; embedded flash memory densities up to 256 KB; SRAM at 32 KB; analog, communications and timing peripherals; and safety and security functions. In many battery-powered applications the MCU spends most of the time in a low-power standby mode, waiting for an internal or external event to wake up the CPU and process data, make decisions and communicate with other system components.

The capacitive touch IP in the MCU provides enhanced operability for a variety of touch and touchless system implementations. For example, it supports sensing through acrylic or glass panels more than 10 mm thick. It also implements proximity sensing (hovering) and 3D gestures. The MCU’s capacitive touch noise tolerance meets the requirements of IEC EN61000-4-3 level 4 (radiated) and EN61000-4-6 level 3 (conducted) for ongoing operation with minimal sensing errors.

The MCUs offer an IEC60730 self-test library and feature integrated safety functions that provide confirmation of normal operation. These safety functions can be used to perform MCU self-diagnostics. Other features include an AES cryptography accelerator, a true random number generator (TRNG) and memory protection units that provide the fundamental blocks to develop a secure IoT system.

A Flexible Software Package (FSP) allows consumers to reuse their legacy code and combine it with software from partners across the Arm ecosystem to speed implementation of complex connectivity and security functions. The FSP includes FreeRTOS and middleware, offering a premium device-to-cloud option for developers. These out-of-box options can be easily replaced and expanded with any other RTOS or middleware.