Nordic Semiconductor S120 8-link central protocol stack and nRF51 wireless-charging software development kit

Nordic Semiconductor has announced the S120 8-link central protocol stack and nRF51 wireless-charging software development kit (SDK) for wireless-charging applications based on the Rezence standard. Rezence is a wireless power-transfer technology and specification based on the principles of magnetic resonance.

The S120 is a Bluetooth low-energy SoftDevice for the nRF51822 system on chip (SoC). The nRF51 wireless-charging SDK includes services/profiles for a Rezence power transmitting unit (PTU) and power receiving unit (PRU) as well as state machine examples. The product combination provides a solution for the out-of-band (OOB) signalling part of a Rezence charge pad. With the support for 8-link concurrent link, a charge pad based on nRF51822/S120 can support simultaneous charging of up to eight devices.

Rezence technology will be used to turn almost any surface into a wireless-charging surface capable of powering any Rezence-enabled mobile device. This includes retail environments, airports, automobiles and home and office furniture. The technology will also be integrated into other devices such as laptops and portable chargers, creating mobile wireless-charging power sources.

The S120 includes all Bluetooth low-energy protocol layers up to and including GATT/GAP. It supports multilink central and observer roles, GATT server and client, and event-driven, asynchronous and thread-safe GATT/GAP and L2CAP application programming interfaces (APIs). Its ability to support eight simultaneous links makes it suitable for Bluetooth low-energy hubs that are not smartphones or tablets. The product is delivered as a SoftDevice for Nordic’s nRF51 Series ICs and as such it is a pre-compiled binary with no link time dependencies to application code, conveniently available as a download.

The nRF51 offers a range of Bluetooth low-energy services/profile and also complete examples to simplify and speed up application development. The product also takes advantage of the nRF51 series flash-based architecture and offers developers features and examples such as over-the-air device firmware upgrade (OTA DFU).