Nordic Semiconductor moves into Wi-Fi with dual-band nRF7002 SoC
Nordic Semiconductor’s first Wi-Fi companion IC marks the company’s entry into the Wi-fi wireless IoT market. The nRF7002, low power, dual-band Wi-Fi 6 companion IC provides Wi-Fi connectivity and Wi-Fi-based location data using service set identifiers (SSIDs) communicating with local Wi-Fi hubs. It can be used alongside Nordic’s nRF52 and nRF53 series multiprotocol SoCs and nRF91 series cellular IoT systems in packages (SiPs). The nRF7002 can also be used in conjunction with non-Nordic host devices.
The nRF7002 can be used to develop Wi-Fi 6 applications. The Wi-Fi 6 standard features efficiency gains that support long life, battery-powered wireless IoT operation. Nordic Semiconductor offers devtools and nRF Connect software development kits to support developers.
The addition of Wi-Fi to its product range means that Nordic will now support all three wireless protocols used in Matter, the smart home protocol,i.e., Bluetooth LE for commissioning, Thread for low power mesh networking and Wi-Fi for high speed wireless applications.
The launch of the nRF7002 follows Nordic’s acquisition of Imagination Technologies’ development team, core Wi-Fi expertise, and Wi-Fi IP tech assets in 2020.
“We were able to bring our first Wi-Fi IC to market very quickly as a result of acquiring an extremely capable Wi-Fi team alongside a portfolio of Wi-Fi assets that team had already developed,” says Nordic CTO / executive vice president of R&D and strategy, Svein-Egil Nielsen.
The nRF7002 is supplied in a 6.0 x 6.0mm QFN package and is sampling now.
