Announcing ESP32-H2, an IEEE 802.15.4 + Bluetooth 5 (LE) RISC-V SoC

Espressif Systems (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (SSE: 688018.SH), announces today the upcoming release of ESP32-H2 with IEEE 802.15.4 and Bluetooth 5 (LE) connectivity, operable in the 2.4 GHz band. ESP32-H2 enhances Espressif’s SoC portfolio far beyond Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity by adding IEEE 802.15.4 connectivity as well.

ESP32-H2 combines important connectivity technologies, such as IEEE 802.15.4 radio connectivity, which is vital to mesh architectures with low power consumption. ESP32-H2 also makes the Thread and Zigbee protocols available, thus addressing a variety of cases in application development. Furthermore, Bluetooth LE supports point-to-point, broadcast and mesh communication topologies, while it also enables the direct communication between a smartphone and an ESP32-H2-based device.

The combined availability of IEEE 802.15.4 and Bluetooth LE connectivity enables building devices for the Matter protocol, which intends to bring interoperability for smart-home devices. With ESP32-H2 and other SoCs in its portfolio, Espressif can offer the full spectrum of Matter protocol solutions for end-products with Wi-Fi or Thread connectivity, as well as for border router implementations using a combination of SoCs.

ESP32-H2 has a single-core, 32-bit RISC-V microcontroller that can be clocked up to 96 MHz. It has a 256 KB SRAM and works with external flash. It has 26 programmable GPIOs with support for ADC, SPI, UART, I2C, I2S, RMT, GDMA and PWM. ESP32-H2 continues to facilitate building secure connected devices through hardware security features such as ECC-based secure boot, AES-128/256-XTS-based flash encryption, digital signature and an HMAC peripheral for identity protection, as well as cryptographic accelerators for improved performance.

Block Diagram of ESP32-­H2

ESP32-H2 will support Thread version 1.x and Zigbee 3.x. Espressif, as an active member of CSA, will continue to develop and support the Matter protocol on ESP32-H2 for as long as the standard progresses. ESP32-H2 will be supported through Espressif’s mature IoT Development Framework (ESP-IDF), so that our customers can benefit from their familiarity with our field-proven platform that already powers millions of connected devices.

If you are interested in ESP32-H2 or want to get more detailed information, please contact our customer support team. We will get back to you as soon as possible.

Note: Due to a change in our product planning, ESP32-H2 will eventually leverage the power of IEEE 802.15.4 in conjunction with Bluetooth 5 (LE) radio instead of the previously announced Bluetooth 5.2 (LE) radio.