Includes 3 types of IoT gateways, capable of connecting to low-power wireless sensor mesh networks

Nordic Semiconductor announced that Particle, the most widely used IoT platform, has adopted the nRF52840 SoC, which supports Nordic's advanced Bluetooth LE (Bluetooth Low Energy), ANT, 802.15.4, and 2.4GHz wireless technologies, for its end-to-end mesh networking development platform, 'Particle Mesh'.

The Particle Mesh platform enables developers to rapidly configure mesh networks based on IEEE 802.15.4 nodes running on OpenThread, an open-source version of Thread. Particle Mesh includes three types of IoT gateways: Argon (supports Wi-Fi/Mesh/Bluetooth LE), Boron (LTE M1 and NB1/Mesh/Bluetooth LE), and Xenon (Mesh/Bluetooth LE), which allow low-power wireless sensor mesh networks to be connected to the Internet.

The nRF52840 SoC is a Bluetooth 5 (Bluetooth LE) and Thread 1.1 certified wireless solution and is the only multiprotocol SoC on the market capable of supporting both Bluetooth 5 and Thread simultaneously. This performance is supported by the Bluetooth LE and Thread 'Dynamic Multiprotocol' feature of the nRF52840 SoC, which simultaneously supports Nordic's S140 SoftDevice (Bluetooth LE protocol stack) and OpenThread RF protocol stack.

The 32-bit Arm Cortex M4F processor, 1MB flash memory, and 256kB RAM embedded in the nRF52840 SoC enable the Particle Mesh development kit to support the most complex wireless applications, and the SoC's Arm CryptoCell-310 cryptographic accelerator also ensures secure OTA-DFU (Over-the-Air Device Firmware Updates).

The particle mesh gateway can communicate with other thread devices on the mesh network using the thread function of the nRF52840 SoC, and developers can perform mesh setup, deployment, and diagnosis in the field using Bluetooth 4.0 or higher smartphones and tablets via Bluetooth LE connection.

The Particle Mesh Development Kit is pre-configured to enable seamless integration with Particle's 'Device Cloud,' a cloud infrastructure and unique development tools for implementing, connecting, and managing mesh networks.

Nordic's nRF52840 Bluetooth LE SoC is Nordic's cutting-edge ultra-low-power wireless solution. This SoC can support complex Bluetooth LE and other low-power wireless applications that were previously impossible with single-chip solutions. This SoC integrates an Arm processor and a 2.4GHz multiprotocol wireless architecture, and features an RX receive sensitivity of -96dB and an on-chip PA that amplifies output power up to 8dBm. This SoC comes with an S140 SoftDevice that supports simultaneous Central, Peripheral, Broadcaster, and Observer Bluetooth LE functions.

William Hart, General Manager of Prototyping at Particle, stated, "We selected Thread among several mesh networking solutions due to its market maturity, scalability to large networks, use of open standards, and open-source implementation capabilities." He added, "Additionally, Bluetooth LE is a core component of Particle Mesh that enables bidirectional communication between smartphones and Particle Mesh devices to simplify device setup, deployment, and diagnostics. Since we needed to support both Thread and Bluetooth LE, Nordic's nRF52840 SoC was the ideal choice for our new Particle Mesh hardware solution."

William Hart also explained, “The collaboration with Nordic was very impressive,” adding, “Nordic provided technical information and examples, and offered direct support for the entire process from design to production, as well as access to global distribution partners.”