Integrated Nordic nRF9160 SiP and nRF52840 SoC
Avnet Asia AVT9152 Module Accelerates IoT Development


Nordic Semiconductor announced on the 8th that it has selected the company's 'nRF9160' low power SiP with integrated LTE-M/NB-IoT modem and GPS, and the 'nRF52840' Bluetooth 5.2 and Bluetooth LE multiprotocol SoC for Avent Asia's 'AVT9152' cellular IoT and short-range wireless connectivity module.

The AVT9152 module, measuring 26 mm × 28 mm, supports LTE-M/NB-IoT, GPS, and Bluetooth LE and can be applied to various embedded applications such as beacons for COVID-19 contact tracing, logistics and asset tracking, vending machines, kiosk terminals, medical devices, and smart building automation.

The Arm® Cortex®-M33 processor in the Nordic nRF9160 SiP embedded in the AVT9152 module and the 64MHz 32-bit Arm Cortex M4 processor with Floating Point Unit (FPU) in the nRF52840 SoC provide ample computational power for processor-intensive IoT applications.

The module provides flexibility and expandability for IoT product development, and IoT designs can be completed simply by connecting power, sensors, and antennas to the module. Simplifying the development process also helps reduce time to market.

The AVT9152 evaluation kit simplifies IoT application development and provides an end-to-end cloud connectivity platform via Avnet’s enterprise-ready ‘(IoT) IoTConnect’ cloud platform. It features a 3-axis accelerometer, a 3-axis gyroscope, pressure, temperature, relative humidity, ambient light, and motion (PIR) sensors.

◇ Nordic nRF9160 SiP supporting both SIM and eSIM

The nRF9160 SiP is a low-power, globally certified product for cellular IoT applications, featuring an integrated RF front-end (RFFE), GPS, and power management capabilities, plus a multimode LTE-M/NB-IoT modem in a small package.

The embedded 64MHz processor includes 1MB flash and 256KB RAM, a variety of analog and digital peripherals, automatic power and clock management, Arm TrustZone™ for trusted execution, and the Arm CryptoCell 310 for application layer security.

The nRF9160 SiP communicates with the LTE modem via the BSD Secure Sockets API and supports application layer protocols such as CoAP, MQTT, LWM2M, and the application itself.

The embedded LTE modem supports both SIM and eSIM, provides LTE bands ranging from 700MHz to 2,200MHz, 23dBm output power, a single-pin 50Ω antenna, and a UICC interface. LTE stack layers L1-L3, IPv4/IPv6, TCP/UDP, TLS/DTLS are supported by the modem's firmware.

◇ Nordic nRF52840 SoC providing all Bluetooth 5 features

The nRF52840 SoC is Bluetooth 5, Thread 1.1, Zigbee PRO (R21), and Green Power proxy specification certified, and features dynamic multiprotocol capability to support multiple wireless protocols simultaneously.

It also features a 2.4GHz multiprotocol radio supporting Arm processors and Bluetooth 5, ANT™, Thread, Zigbee, IEEE 802.15.4, and other 2.4GHz RF protocol software, as well as 1MB of flash memory and 256KB of RAM.

The new radio architecture with built-in PA also provides an RX sensitivity of -95dBm (at Bluetooth LE 1Mbps), a maximum output power of 8dBm, and a total link budget of 103dBm.

It supports all the features of Bluetooth 5 (4x the range, 2x the data bandwidth, etc.) which has 4x the range and 2x the data bandwidth (2Mbps) compared to Bluetooth 4.2. It also integrates the Arm Cryptocell 310 cryptographic accelerator to help solve IoT security issues.

It comes with Nordic’s S140 SoftDevice, a Bluetooth 5-certified software protocol stack that enables long-range and large-scale data-driven Bluetooth LE applications.