Zigbee solution expands low power, short-range connectivity portfolio

Nordic Semiconductor offers its first Zigbee wireless connectivity solution for use with the nRF52840 multiprotocol SoC. The first engineering release is offered now with a production-grade Zigbee 3.0-certified release projected for the second half of 2018. The introduction of the solution expands the company's portfolio of mesh networking products for smart home, enterprise, and industry. As with their other mesh solutions, the SoC with the S140 v6.0 SoftDevice ("stack") can support concurrent Zigbee and Bluetooth® 5/Bluetooth Low Energy operation. "Our membership is privileged to gain Nordic's valuable industry insight and expertise. We are excited to welcome them, and work with them towards certification on their first Zigbee platform," says Victor Berrios, VP Technology for the Zigbee Alliance. "By adding Zigbee to its new software development kit, Nordic is expanding the reach of its product while providing additional design choice for IoT product manufacturers." "Nordic's strategy is to support the leading standards-based low power wireless protocols on its silicon and through its development tools," says Geir Langeland, Nordic's director of sales and marketing. "Zigbee is one of those leading standards, particularly in the home and industrial automation sector, so we are pleased to soon offer a certified, concurrent support solution for Zigbee and Bluetooth 5 on our high-end multiprotocol chip to provide developers with complete flexibility in their wireless IoT designs."