Nordic Semiconductor announces the nRF7001, expanding its nRF70 series of Wi-Fi 6 companion ICs. Complementing the nRF7002, which supports 2.4 and 5 GHz, the nRF7001 provides a secure, low-power Wi-Fi 6 companion IC for end products requiring only 2.4 GHz connectivity. The nRF7001 reduces bill-of-materials (BoM) costs for designs requiring single-band functionality in smart homes, smart cities, industrial automation, and other low-power Wi-Fi IoT applications.
Wi-Fi 6 Companion ICs
The nRF70 series of Wi-Fi 6 companion ICs provide low-power, robust, and secure Wi-Fi connectivity and Wi-Fi-assisted positioning based on service set identifier (SSID) scanning.
Like the nRF7002, the nRF7001 companion IC is available with Nordic's award-winning nRF52 and nRF53® series of multiprotocol System-on-Chip (SoC) and nRF9160™ Cellular Internet of Things (LTE-M/NB-IoT) System-in-Package (SiP) .
“The nRF7001 is the consummate complement to the nRF7002 as it provides a direct single-band alternative to the dual-band companion IC for products that only need to operate in the 2.4 GHz band," said Ioannis Glaropoulos, Nordic technical product manager for the semiconductor. The nRF7001 is designed to provide highly reliable 2.4 GHz connectivity and offers all the Wi-Fi features of the nRF7002, including compliance with the latest standards and power-saving features, but at a lower cost. ” When matched with a Nordic nRF52840 running as the host processor, The nRF7001 provides a cost-effective, high-performance Wi-Fi solution."
The nRF7001 comes with IC Support Station (STA), Software Emulated Access Point (SoftAP) and Wi-Fi Direct operation and is compatible with IEEE 802.11b, a, g, n ("Wi-Fi 4") and ax ("Wi-Fi 6 ") standards. The product also offers ideal coexistence with low-power Bluetooth, Thread and Zigbee. The nRF7001 features support for Targeted Wake-Up Time (TWT), a key Wi-Fi 6 power saving capability. Interfacing with the nRF52840 or other host processors is done through the serial peripheral interface (SPI) or quad SPI (QSPI). The nRF7001 provides a single space stream, 20 MHz of channel bandwidth, 64 QAM (MCS7), OFDMA, up to 86 Mbps of PHY capacity, and BSS coloring.
Developers can quickly and easily start nRF7001-based designs thanks to support from the nRF Connect SDK, Nordic's scalable and unified software development kit for building products based on the company's wireless devices. To make use of the nRF7001 to develop applications, the nRF7002 Development Kit (DK) can be used, as the nRF Connect SDK supports emulation of the nRF7001 IC on this DK. The nRF7001 Companion IC, nRF7002 DK and nRF Connect SDK allow product designers to easily add 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi capability to their products, allowing them to easily connect to nRF cloud services and communicate with other devices over Wi-Fi network.
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