Bluetooth 5 Ready SoC, 4x operating range and 2x bandwidth
Redefining Smart Homes, IoT, and Wearables with Enhanced Security Performance

Nordic Semiconductor (Country Manager Soo-chul Choi) announced the Bluetooth 5 Ready nRF52840 SoC, featuring new capabilities and performance that redefine the performance standards for single-chip Bluetooth® Low Energy applications.

The nRF52840 SoC is particularly suitable for smart home and advanced wearable applications, as well as for payment and medical wearable devices, industrial sensors, and IoT (Internet of Things) devices.

The nRF52840 is designed to support Bluetooth 5, the core specification of the latest Bluetooth wireless technology that the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) is scheduled to officially adopt soon. Bluetooth 5 provides features such as long operating range and enhanced throughput that can dramatically improve the suitability of Bluetooth wireless technology for smart home, wearable, and IoT applications.

The nRF52840 SoC, which complies with these latest specifications, can provide Bluetooth Low Energy wireless connectivity that supports up to four times the operating range and twice the data bandwidth (2 Mbps) compared to Bluetooth 4.2, the Bluetooth Low Energy specification, when the output power is maximized.

In addition, the Bluetooth 5-supported nRF52840 SoC also includes IEEE 802.15.4 functionality. 802.15.4 wireless technology forms the foundation for smart home technologies such as ZigBee and Thread (there are also additional upper layers not defined by the standard). Additionally, IEEE 802.15.4 can be used as a network adaptation layer for 6LoWPAN and standard Internet protocols. By supporting 802.15.4, the nRF52840 SoC can dramatically expand product capabilities as an interoperable foundational technology for IoT, smart home, and industrial sensor wireless networks utilizing various wireless technologies.

The nRF52840 SoC is designed based on the proven architecture of Nordic Semiconductor’s existing nRF52 series SoCs to support complex Bluetooth Low Energy and other low-power wireless applications that were impossible to implement with existing single-chip solutions. The nRF52840 SoC adopts the proven 64MHz, 32-bit ARM® Cortex™ M4F processor used in Nordic’s nRF52832 SoC, and utilizes a CPU with sufficient general-purpose processing power as well as floating-point and DSP capabilities to fully meet the requirements of even the most demanding wireless applications.

Compared to Nordic’s existing nRF52832 SoC, the improved hardware of the nRF52840 SoC is based on a new wireless architecture based on on-chip PA, which not only significantly increases output power but also allows it to be used in applications that control the entire home with an increased link budget. Flash memory has doubled to 1MB and RAM memory has quadrupled to 256kB. It supports Bluetooth 5, 802.15.4, ANT, and proprietary 2.4GHz wireless technology, and includes a full-speed USB 2.0 controller, a Quad-SPI interface, and several new peripheral hosts (such as EasyDMA). In addition, the nRF52840 can operate with a 5V power supply, such as a rechargeable battery.

Designed to address the fundamental security challenges facing IoT, the nRF52840 SoC integrates the ARM CryptoCell-310 cryptographic accelerator, which provides best-in-class security capabilities for a Cortex-M-based SoC. It also offers extensive options for generating and storing encrypted passwords or keys.

Along with the launch of the nRF52840 SoC, the latest version of Nordic’s RF protocol software stack family, S140 SoftDevice, is also scheduled to be released. S140 SoftDevice is a Bluetooth 5 compatible software stack that supports Bluetooth 5’s long-range and high data throughput capabilities.

Nordic plans to release the S140 SoftDevice and related nRF5 SDK, which support Bluetooth 5's long-range and high-throughput modes, upon ratification of the Bluetooth 5 standard in early December. Engineering samples and development kits will be available for purchase through Nordic's distribution network starting December 6. Mass production of the nRF52840 is scheduled to be available in the fourth quarter of 2017.