Nordic Semiconductor (Country Manager: Choi Soo-chul), a Norwegian ULP RF specialist that has sold over 1 billion ULP wireless chips to date, expressed a positive outlook on the recent Internet of Things (IoT) market and introduced its Bluetooth Smart wireless solution, the nRF51822 SoC, along with development tools such as the nRF51-DK and nRF51-Dongle.

As seen in the recently emerging IoT, the world is currently witnessing a rapid revolution in wireless technology unlike anything experienced before, with wireless technology becoming embedded everywhere.

This trend is being further accelerated by the continuous growth of the Internet, including high-speed mobile communication networks such as 3G and 4G and the cloud, as well as by the development of ultra-low power wireless technology such as Bluetooth Smart (formerly Bluetooth Low Energy). Nordic predicts that, for example, by around 2018, 96% of all phones will use Bluetooth Smart.

The recently released Bluetooth 4.2 version incorporates the Internet Protocol Support Profile (IPSP), an IPv6 profile, for the implementation of IoT. This is because IoT is having a significant impact on the Bluetooth Smart market, and Kim Jae-oh, Deputy General Manager at Nordic Korea, predicted that the majority of future IoT devices will be Bluetooth Smart.

Therefore, he said, "Large-scale heterogeneous networks for IoT require open standards, and the only technology that can satisfy this is IPv6." He explained that Bluetooth 4.2 implements not only power efficiency but also government-grade security through 128-bit AES, and that packet capacity has been improved tenfold and speed up to 2.5 times.

Nordic Semiconductor was a pioneer in developing ULP wireless technology almost exclusively in the early 2000s, and has since continued to strive to redefine the cutting-edge ULP wireless market, including playing a key role in the establishment and development of the ULP Bluetooth Smart wireless standard.

Thanks to these efforts, the revenue share of Nordic’s Bluetooth Smart division has shown record growth in recent years, stated General Manager Kim Jae-oh. As of the fourth quarter of 2014, revenue related to Nordic’s Bluetooth Smart solutions has grown more than 20-fold compared to the first quarter of 2012.

In addition, as interest in IoT surged, Nordic’s sales of related development kits also showed record growth, with sales reaching approximately 22,080 units in 2014. This represents a growth rate nearly three times that of the 7,836 units sold in 2013.

Applications realized by the nRF51822 SoC

Nordic Semiconductor's nRF51822 SoC is a Bluetooth Smart and 2.4GHz dedicated wireless solution optimized for ULP wireless access, integrating a 2.4GHz wireless multi-protocol, a 32-bit ARM Cortex M0 processor, up to 256KB of flash memory, and up to 32KB of RAM.

In addition, thanks to a unique and powerful software architecture in which wireless protocol software (stack) and user application code are separated, each function can be implemented independently, providing optimal flexibility and ease of development.

Bluetooth Smart wireless technology enables new applications and products, such as wearables, that were technically or commercially impossible to implement until a few years ago by achieving ultra-low power.

Nordic’s nRF51822 SoC is adopted, for example, in Adidas’ FIT SMART wristband and synchronizes Bluetooth Smart wireless technology with Adidas’ miCoach app running on Bluetooth Smart Ready iOS and Android smartphones.

Also a company specializing in the beacon field It is adopted in Estimote Stickers for Estimote's new concept 'Nearables' beacons to implement Bluetooth Smart wireless connectivity.

In addition, it is used in Logitech’s ultrathin iPad Air 2 to implement Bluetooth Smart wireless connectivity, and Casambi Technologies, a European lighting specialist, has developed a Bluetooth Smart lighting control platform using the nRF51822 SoC, achieving mesh networking performance that is five times faster than competitors’ Bluetooth Smart solutions.

Nordic plans to continue strengthening its position in the Bluetooth Smart market by continuously releasing nRF51-related SoCs in the future.

Smaller and easier-to-use development tools

Nordic also provides development tools to make development and testing easier. The nRF51-DK is a single-board product for all nRF51 series development scenarios and supports Bluetooth Smart and 2.4GHz, as well as ANT, which has had a significant influence in the low-power sector since before the advent of Bluetooth Raw Energy (BLE).

"In addition, Nordic's Deputy General Manager Yoo Jin-hyuk explained, 'It is compatible with Arduino Uno shields, enabling fast testing, and since it supports ARM mbed development, development can be carried out with just the board anywhere with a web connection, allowing the hardware size to be significantly reduced.'"

True to its name, the nRF51-Dongle is a convenient USB dongle-type development tool and is an ideal product for testing and analyzing nRF Sniffer. It also supports Bluetooth Smart, 2.4GHz, and ANT, uses the standard nRF Toolchain, and supports ARM mbed development.