Nordic Semiconductor, a specialist in low power wireless connectivity, expands its wireless portfolio with a new SiP to support cellular IoT and DECT NR+ deployments, offering a complete design and implementation solution combining comprehensive development tools, nRF Cloud services, and world-class support.

Nordic announced on the 26th that it has recently announced a comprehensive end-to-end cellular IoT solution supporting DECT NR+ (hereinafter NR+).

Nordic’s new cellular IoT products, built around the proven, award-winning nRF91® Series Systems-in-Package (SiP) family, are designed, managed, and supplied by Nordic, with chipsets and modules, software, and services to enable simpler, more reliable, and more cost-effective designs.

This is the first time that a world-class, comprehensive cellular IoT solution with all the elements needed for development is available from a single supplier.

“With this announcement, Nordic Semiconductor establishes itself as a leading supplier of cellular IoT solutions,” said Svenn-Tore Larsen, CEO of Nordic Semiconductor.“We are excited to be the first to deliver a comprehensive cellular IoT solution that will save our customers significant time, cost and engineering resources, while solving inefficiencies caused by fragmented supply chain management.”

“These integrated cellular IoT solutions supporting NR+ follow the same integrated platform strategy implemented in our best-in-class Bluetooth® Low Energy (Bluetooth LE), Thread and Wi-Fi products,” Larsen added.

Nordic’s cellular IoT solution supporting NR+ consists of three nRF91 Series devices, including the two new nRF9161™ and nRF9131™ devices, plus evaluation and development tools, development software, nRF Cloud services, and world-class support. NR+ is the world’s first non-cellular 5G technology standard.

The nRF9161 SiP is a complete, globally pre-certified SiP that enables a single device for secure, global cellular infrastructure-based cellular IoT connectivity or highly reliable massive private 5G networking using NR+.

In particular, new features introduced in the nRF9161 SiP modem firmware and the nRF Cloud further reduce power consumption, making it ideal for use cases that require the longest possible battery life. The nRF9161 SiP also includes several new feature enhancements along with improved GNSS and cell-based positioning performance.

The nRF9131 SiP is a functionally compatible replacement for the nRF9161, but is half the size, giving companies designing high-volume products greater design and sourcing flexibility.

By integrating the SoC and RF front-end into a compact SiP, the nRF9131 eliminates key RF risks and simplifies manufacturing compared to chipsets used in traditional high-volume designs.

“The response from our early sampling customers to the nRF9161 and nRF9131 has been overwhelmingly positive,” says Svein-Egil Nielsen, Nordic’s CTO and SVP of R&D and Strategy. “Much of this positive feedback has been due to customers understanding Nordic’s ambitious strategy to support massive IoT applications from concept through deployment and maintenance, and eventual decommissioning. Nordic’s strategy is to enable companies building the cutting-edge products and sophisticated software needed for the IoT of the future to work with a single supplier. This can only be achieved by trusting that all parts of the platform are optimized to work seamlessly with one another in a secure solution.” “No other company besides Nordic can offer such a comprehensive solution,” he said.

The new SiP is developed using Nordic’s scalable and integrable nRF Connect Software Development Kit (SDK).

The nRF Connect extension for VS Code gives developers access to all the tools and features they need in the Visual Studio Code Integrated Development Environment (IDE).

Additionally, nRF Connect for Desktop provides unique cellular IoT tools to optimize power consumption and evaluate, monitor, and debug network connections.

Devices built around Nordic’s nRF9161 and nRF9131 SiPs are supported via Nordic’s nRF Cloud.

nRF Cloud is optimized to operate Nordic-based IoT devices seamlessly and power-efficiently, providing a comprehensive connectivity platform and cloud service solution.

This allows enterprises to reduce the power consumption of devices, provide critical services throughout the device lifecycle, and support stable execution methods for security risks. These benefits cannot be provided by general-purpose cloud management platforms.

Two new nRF Cloud Security and nRF Cloud Device Management services provide immediate solutions to common cellular IoT challenges, including secure remote provisioning, encrypted identity authentication, device health monitoring, and protocol-agnostic, independent connectivity options.

nRF Cloud provides a set of services optimized for massive IoT deployments from onboarding through decommissioning, with exceptional flexibility and a variety of commercial customization options.

Nordic also provides world-class technical support through DevAcademy and DevZone.

DevAcademy is an interactive online learning platform that educates developers on the technical knowledge needed to build leading products using Nordic solutions.

DevZone provides expert answers to key technical challenges faced when implementing innovative applications with Nordic solutions.

Samples of the nRF9161 and nRF9131 SiP are currently available to lead customers.