Door 22 – Wi-Fi
nRF70 Series – Low power Wi-Fi 6 Companion ICs
Nordic Semiconductor’s Wi-Fi offering is centered around the nRF70 Series of Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) companion ICs, which are designed to bring advanced, low-power, and secure Wi-Fi connectivity to a wide range of IoT applications. These ICs are intended to be used alongside a host processor—such as Nordic’s nRF52, nRF53 or nRF54 Series Bluetooth SoCs, nRF91 Series cellular IoT SiPs, or even non-Nordic host devices—via SPI or QSPI interfaces. This approach allows developers to add Wi-Fi 6 capabilities to their products while leveraging the strengths of Nordic’s ultra-low-power wireless technologies and multiprotocol support.
Key Features and Benefits
- Low Power Consumption: Nordic’s Wi-Fi solutions are optimized for battery-powered devices, enabling long operational lifetimes even in demanding IoT applications.
- Robust Security: Full WPA3 implementation (Personal and Enterprise) ensures that devices are secure and data is protected.
- Seamless Coexistence: The nRF70 Series is designed for ideal operation alongside Bluetooth LE, Thread, Zigbee, and cellular IoT, with dedicated coexistence interfaces and Packet Traffic Arbitration (PTA) for radio resource management.
- Matter Support: The nRF70 Series supports all wireless protocols used in Matter, enabling interoperable smart home devices that can communicate over Wi-Fi, Bluetooth LE, and Thread.
- Easy Integration: Wi-Fi is fully integrated into the nRF Connect SDK, which is based on Zephyr RTOS. This provides developers with a unified code base, comprehensive documentation, and a wide range of sample applications and protocol stacks (including TCP, UDP, CoAP, LwM2M, MQTT, and HTTP).
- Location Services: Wi-Fi-based locationing bridges the gap between cellular and GNSS-based locationing, offering a power-efficient and accurate solution for asset tracking, especially in environments where GPS reception is poor
Applications
Nordic’s Wi-Fi offering is suitable for a wide range of IoT applications, including:
- Smart home and industrial IoT devices: Adding Wi-Fi 6 connectivity to products that require high throughput, low latency, and robust security.
- Asset tracking and locationing: Using Wi-Fi scanning for accurate and power-efficient location services.
- Multiprotocol applications: Seamless integration with Bluetooth LE, Thread, Zigbee, and cellular IoT for complex, feature-rich IoT systems.
- Battery operated Wi-Fi products: Wearables, small medical devices, everything that needs a power-efficient connection
nRF70 Series Overview
The nRF70 Series includes several products, each tailored for different use cases:
nRF7002
This is the flagship device in the series, offering dual-band (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz) Wi-Fi 6 support. It is designed for applications that require high throughput, robust security, and seamless coexistence with other wireless protocols such as Bluetooth LE, Thread, and Zigbee. The nRF7002 supports Station (STA), SoftAP, and Wi-Fi Direct modes, and is compliant with 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax standards. It features advanced security with WPA3 Personal and Enterprise, Target Wake Time (TWT) for power savings, OFDMA for efficient spectrum use, and BSS coloring for improved network performance. The nRF7002 is available in both QFN and WLCSP packages, making it suitable for a variety of hardware designs. It is also supported in the nRF Connect SDK, which provides a unified development environment for all Nordic wireless products. The nRF7002 DK is Wi-Fi 6 certified, making it a strong reference design for embedded Wi-Fi products.
nRF7002
6 x 6 mm
QFN48
nRF7002
3.4 x 3.8 mm
WLCSP
nRF7001
This device is a cost-efficient, single-band (2.4 GHz) Wi-Fi 6 companion IC. It offers the same main features as the nRF7002, except for 5 GHz support. The nRF7001 is ideal for applications that do not require dual-band operation but still need advanced Wi-Fi 6 features, robust security, and low power consumption. Like the nRF7002, it supports Station (STA), SoftAP, and Wi-Fi Direct modes, and is fully integrated into the nRF Connect SDK.
nRF7001
6 x 6 mm
QFN48
nRF7000
This device is focused on SSID-based Wi-Fi locationing, supporting both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz scanning for asset tracking and location services. Unlike the nRF7002 and nRF7001, the nRF7000 does not support Station or SoftAP modes, making it ideal for applications where Wi-Fi connectivity is used primarily for locationing rather than data communication.
nRF7000
6 x 6 mm
QFN48
Wi-Fi Selection Guide
|
Description |
Full featured low power Wi-Fi 6 IoT solution |
Cost-optimized low power 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi 6 IoT solution |
Low power Wi-Fi 6 location-based services solution |
|
Wi-Fi 6 |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
2.4 GHz |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
5 GHz |
Yes |
Yes |
|
|
Scanning (active and passive) |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Station (STA) |
Yes |
Yes |
|
|
SoftAP |
Yes |
Yes |
|
|
Package |
QFN / WLCSP |
QFN |
QFN |
Development Tools and Hardware
Nordic provides a comprehensive suite of development tools and hardware to support Wi-Fi product development:
- nRF7002 DK: A development kit for the nRF7002 and nRF7001, enabling low-power dual-band Wi-Fi and coexistence with Bluetooth LE, Thread, and Zigbee.
- nRF7002 EK: An Arduino shield form-factor evaluation kit, suitable for use with a variety of host devices, including non-Nordic hosts.
- nRF7002 Expansion Board: A plug-in board for adding Wi-Fi 6 connectivity to the Nordic Thingy:53 platform.
- Power Profiler Kit II: A tool for measuring and optimizing power consumption in embedded solutions.
- Software Tools: nRF Connect for Desktop, nRF Connect for VS Code, nRF Command Line Tools, and nRF Util, all designed to streamline development, programming, and debugging
nRF7002 Development Kit
Thingy:53 with nRF7002 Expansion Board
nRF7002 Evaluation Kit
Power Profiler Kit II
Participate and Win!
How does the competition work?
You can win a Chipolo LOOP or CARD and a Nordic DevKit of your choice on behalf of your company.
To enter, select which Chipolo finder you would like to receive, as well as which Nordic boards you would like to win (you can select multiple options, and the lottery will decide which one you may win).
Fill out the form now and, with a little luck, you will receive the combination of your wishes: