Company moves into Wi-Fi with dual-band 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 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 SiPs. The device can also be employed in conjunction with non-Nordic host devices.

The device can be utilised to develop Wi-Fi 6 applications. The Wi-Fi 6 standard features efficiency gains that support long life, battery powered wireless IoT operation. The company provides devtools and nRF Connect software development kits to support developers.

The addition of Wi-Fi to its product range indicates that it 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 device follows its 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 device is supplied in a 6mm x 6mm QFN package.