Nordic’s nRF52840 brings Bluetooth 5, Bluetooth mesh, multiprotocol wireless support to IoT developers

OSLO, NORWAY. Nordic Semiconductor has announced availability of its nRF52840 Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) system on chip. In addition to being Bluetooth 5-certified, the multi-protocol SoC supports Bluetooth mesh, Thread, 802.15.4, ANT, and 2.4GHz proprietary protocols. The chips are also outfitted with a 32-bit Arm Cortex-M4F processor running at 64 MHz for general processing tasks, as well as an Arm CryptoCell-310 cryptographic accelerator.

The nRF52840 delivers the full benefits of Bluetooth 5, including 2 Mbps on-air raw data bandwidth, 4x range, 8x broadcasting capability with packet payloads of up to 251 bytes, and improved channel coexistence. It also supports concurrent Bluetooth 5 and Thread operation through a “Dynamic Multiprotocol” feature that enables simultaneous execution of Nordic’s S140 SoftDevice software stack and the OpenThread RF protocol stack.

The SoC is based on a radio architecture consisting of an on-chip +8 dBm power amplifier (PA), 1 MB Flash, 256 kB RAM, a full-speed USB 2.0 controller, and other peripherals such as a quad-SPI interface with EasyDMA. The chip can also operate from power supplies above 5V.

The nRF52840 release is accompanied by a new version of Nordic’s nRF5 software development kit (SDK), which includes full peripheral driver support for the SoC, an IPv6-over-Bluetooth LE adaptation layer (6LoWPAN), a complete Internet Protocol (IP) suite, and SEGGER’s Embedded Studio development software. A production-grade nRF5 SDK for Mesh tool is also available for Bluetooth mesh developers working with the nRF52840.

More information on the part can be found at www.nordicsemi.com/eng/Products/nRF52840.

About the Author

Brandon Lewis, Editor-in-Chief of Embedded Computing Design, is responsible for guiding the property's content strategy, editorial direction, and engineering community engagement, which includes IoT Design, Automotive Embedded Systems, the Power Page, Industrial AI & Machine Learning, and other publications. As an experienced technical journalist, editor, and reporter with an aptitude for identifying key technologies, products, and market trends in the embedded technology sector, he enjoys covering topics that range from development kits and tools to cyber security and technology business models. Brandon received a BA in English Literature from Arizona State University, where he graduated cum laude. He can be reached by email at brandon.lewis@opensysmedia.com.

Follow on Twitter Follow on Linkedin Visit Website More Content by Brandon Lewis