Nordic Semiconductor nRF7002 companion IC and nRF7002 Development Kit

Nordic Semiconductor has launched the nRF7002 Wi-Fi 6 companion IC and its associated nRF7002 Development Kit (DK). The IC is a low-power Wi-Fi 6 companion IC that provides dual-band (2.4 and 5 GHz) connectivity. The IC can be used together with the nRF52 and nRF53 Series multiprotocol Systems-on-Chip (SoCs) and the nRF9160 cellular IoT (LTE-M/NB-IoT) System-in-Package (SiP), but can also be used in conjunction with non-Nordic host devices. The DK enables developers to get started on nRF7002-based IoT projects.

The IC is designed to work alongside Nordic’s nRF52 and nRF53 Series, making it suitable for Matter, a smart-home standard backed by Amazon, Apple, Google, Nordic, Samsung and hundreds of other companies. The introduction of the IC and the nRF7002 DK makes it easy for developers to get started on Matter and any other Wi-Fi based applications. Matter uses Thread and Wi-Fi for data transport and Bluetooth LE for commissioning.

The IC brings low-power and secure Wi-Fi to the IoT. The dual-band IC complies with Station (STA), Soft Access Point (AP) and Wi-Fi Direct operation, and meets the IEEE 802.11b, a, g, n (“Wi-Fi 4”), ac (“5”), and ax (“6”) Wi-Fi standards. The product also offers coexistence with Bluetooth LE, Thread and Zigbee. The IC supports Target Wake Time (TWT), a key Wi-Fi 6 power saving feature. Interfacing with a host processor is done via Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI) or Quad SPI (QSPI). The IC offers a single spatial stream, 20 MHz channel bandwidth, 64 QAM (MCS7), OFDMA, up to 86 Mbps PHY throughput and BSS colouring.

The introduction of the IC is accompanied by the launch of the nRF7002 DK, a development kit for the Wi-Fi 6 companion IC. The DK includes an nRF7002 IC and features an nRF5340 multiprotocol SoC as a host processor for the nRF7002. The nRF5340 embeds a 128 MHz Arm Cortex-M33 application processor and a 64 MHz high-efficiency network processor. The DK supports the development of low-power Wi-Fi applications and enables Wi-Fi 6 features like OFDMA, beamforming and TWT. The DK includes: Arduino connectors; two programmable buttons; a Wi-Fi dual-band antenna and a Bluetooth LE antenna, and current measurement pins.

The nRF7002 companion IC and nRF7002 DK are available now from Nordic’s distribution partners.