Nordic Semiconductor added Wi-Fi 6 companion to its Bt and cellular chips

Date: 18/08/2022
Wireless radio transceiver chipmaker Nordic Semiconductor has launched Wi-Fi 6 companion chip nRF7002 for use in IOT electronic products. This announcement follows after company's buying of Wi-Fidevelopment team and the asset from Imagination Technologies.

With this Nordic customers can have a single source for their Bluetooth Wi-Fi and cellular IOT radio chip requirements. Among the wireless protocols, Wi-Fi plays important role in smart home and is supported by leading product and cloud services vendors. Nordic do not want to miss out in the Wi-Fi area. Nordic now supports three wireless protocols of Bluetooth LE for commissioning, Thread for low power mesh networking, and Wi-Fi for high-speed wireless applications.

nRF7002 is called as ‘companion IC’ due to its ability to provide seamless Wi-Fi connectivity and Wi-Fi-based locationing (SSID sniffing of local Wi-Fi hubs) when used with Nordic’s other non-Wi-Fi products such as nRF52 and nRF53 Series multiprotocol Systems-on-Chip (SoCs), and nRF91 Series cellular IoT Systems-in-Package (SiPs). The nRF7002 can also be with other host devices not made by Nordic.

nRF7002 is designed to consume very low-power and offer high efficiency-gain and long life making it suitable for battery operated wireless IOT products.

"Developing Nordic-based Wi-Fi 6 applications will be as simple as developing any other Nordic wireless IoT application, using the same devtools and nRF Connect SDK" says Svein-Egil Nielsen, Nordic Semiconductor.

“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/EVP of R&D and Strategy, Svein-Egil Nielsen. “Nordic has also ensured that developing Nordic-based Wi-Fi 6 applications will be as simple as developing any other Nordic wireless IoT application, including using the same development tools and nRF Connect SDK.”

“The new Wi-Fi team’s relentless hard work to enable Nordic to launch its first Wi-Fi product so soon deserves huge recognition,” continues Mike Davis, Nordic’s ?Wi-Fi Systems & Software Director. “They knew Wi-Fi was the number one missing capability requested by Nordic customers. And they knew Nordic’s customers needed this capability quickly.”??????????????

“I am extremely happy that we are finally able to add Wi-Fi to our wireless IoT product portfolio,” adds Kjetil Holstad, Nordic’s EVP Product Management. “Our sales force is eager to engage with customers worldwide. The nRF7002 is a great starting point and we are already well ahead in terms of building a portfolio of unique Wi-Fi products that will combine seamlessly with Nordic’s existing ultra-low power wireless technologies.”

Nordic is already sampling this nRF7002 which is packaged in a 6 x 6mm QFN package.

Author: Srinivasa Reddy N
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