ESP32-H4

Espressif launches ESP32-H4: low-power SoC supporting 802.15.4 and Bluetooth 5.4 (LE)

Espressif Systems (688018.SH) announced the launch of ESP32-H4, which further enriches the company’s 802.15.4 and Bluetooth LE product matrix following ESP32-H2. This new generation SoC, which combines 802.15.4 and Bluetooth 5.4 (LE) technologies, has been significantly upgraded in terms of power consumption, connectivity performance and memory expansion capabilities to meet the growing market demand for low-power wireless devices. The launch of ESP32-H4 also marks a major technological breakthrough for Espressif in the field of self-developed low-power Bluetooth chips. It has upgraded from a chip that mainly supports Bluetooth 5.0 functions to the latest version of Bluetooth, Bluetooth 5.4 .

ESP32-H4 incorporates several key connectivity technologies, including wireless connectivity compliant with IEEE 802.15.4 and Bluetooth 5.4 (LE) standards. This provides reliable support for building a low-power Mesh architecture (based on Thread 1.3, Zigbee 3.0 and the latest Bluetooth Mesh 1.1 protocol).

ESP32-H4 is an important chip launched by Espressif Systems for the low-power Bluetooth market . It introduces low-power Bluetooth audio (LE Audio, BIS and CIS), direction finding function (Direction Finding, AoA and AoD), sub-rate connection (Connection Subrating), and periodic broadcast with response (PAwR) and other enhancements. LE Audio is a new generation of Bluetooth audio technology standard that implements audio communication on low-power Bluetooth, bringing lower power consumption, shorter latency and better sound quality. LE Audio also supports broadcasting audio to multiple headphones, solving the current pain point problem of a mobile phone on the market that can only connect to one pair of Bluetooth headphones. The Bluetooth direction finding function achieves positioning through the angle of arrival (AoA) and angle of departure (AoD) methods, which can achieve more accurate positioning accuracy than Bluetooth RSSI positioning. It is suitable for indoor positioning and real-time asset tracking in factories and hospitals. PAwR technology can realize two-way communication between a control device (such as a gateway) and thousands of terminal nodes, while ensuring low power consumption of the terminal nodes. It is especially suitable for application scenarios such as electronic shelf labels (ESL).

ESP32-H4 is equipped with a RISC-V 32-bit dual-core processor with a clock frequency of up to 96 MHz, 320 KB on-chip SRAM, 128 KB ROM, and is compatible with external flash. It also supports up to 4 MB of PSRAM, providing developers with a more flexible memory management solution. ESP32-H4 also attaches great importance to security performance in its design. It integrates functions such as secure boot, flash encryption and encryption accelerator, which can effectively protect the security of private keys. The integrated DC-DC power supply in ESP32-H4 can be used to build low-power battery-powered devices. It reduces the supply voltage through efficient voltage regulation, thereby significantly optimizing the SoC’s power consumption. At the same time, by selectively activating peripherals in low-power mode, the battery life of the device can be further improved.

ESP32-H4’s significant upgrades in wireless connection capabilities, optimization of power consumption, and dual-core CPU enable it to implement some complex IoT application scenarios, such as wearable devices, medical equipment, low-power Bluetooth audio, and low-power consumption sensors and other applications. ESP32-H4 helps build IoT devices with long-lasting battery life by combining 802.15.4, Bluetooth LE technology and excellent low-power features. It’s also ideal for building battery-powered Matter over Thread devices.

ESP32-H4 integrates up to 35 GPIOs and supports standard microcontroller peripherals such as I2C, I2S, SPI, UART, LED-PWM, ADC, Timers, DMA, TWAI, USB-OTG and MC-PWM, as well as for automation Event Task Matrix dedicated peripheral that triggers tasks. In addition, ESP32-H4 also has 14 touch-sensing GPIOs, which is suitable for application scenarios with human-machine interaction (HMI) requirements.

ESP32-H4 follows Espressif’s mature IoT development framework ESP-IDF (which has successfully empowered hundreds of millions of IoT devices). In addition, ESP32-H4 also supports ESP-Matter-SDK , allowing customers to quickly build battery-powered Matter products.