Nordic Semiconductor Announces nRF52840 and nRF52832 SoCs Are Bluetooth 5-ready Within 1 week of Bluetooth SIG Bluetooth 5 Launch - Nordic Dev Kits On Sale

Nordic announces the immediate availability of Bluetooth® 5 software stacks and a Bluetooth 5 SDK that offers Nordic customers the ability to build applications utilizing the class-leading features of Nordic’s latest Bluetooth 5-ready nRF52840 System-on-Chip (SoC) with the enhanced range and data throughput options delivered by Bluetooth 5. Software support is also provided for Nordic’s popular nRF52832 SoC for Bluetooth 5’s high speed (2Mbs) throughput feature.

This means Nordic Semiconductor customers using Nordic Bluetooth low energy wireless technology are now among the first to be able to start building exciting new Bluetooth 5 applications.

Bluetooth 5 is the latest version of the Bluetooth wireless technology Core Specification, that was officially adopted by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) last Thursday. Bluetooth 5 introduces longer range and throughput improvements that drastically enhance Bluetooth wireless technology’s suitability for smart home, wearables, and IoT applications. This includes support for dramatically more device and node connections, plus half the time for firmware updates compared to Bluetooth 4.2.

The Nordic Semiconductor Bluetooth 5 developer solution for its nRF52840 SoC comprises the Nordic S140 v5.0 multi-role, concurrent protocol stack that brings Bluetooth 5’s long range and high throughput modes for immediate use to developers on the Nordic nRF52840 SoC. The Nordic nRF5 SDK v13.0-alpha offers application examples that implement this new long range and high throughput functionality. The existing Nordic nRF52832 SoC is also now complemented with a Bluetooth 5 protocol stack, the Nordic S132 v5.0, that enables development using the new 2Mbs high throughput mode.

Bluetooth 5’s high throughput mode offers not only new use cases for wearables and other applications, but will also significantly improve the user-experience with Bluetooth products. Time on air will be reduced, typically leading to faster more robust communication as well as reduced overall power consumption. Also with 2Mbs the prospect of audio over Bluetooth low energy begins to beckon, and whilst at this time not a part of the specification it is a very exciting prospect to be able to introduce real time audio using Bluetooth low energy into products.

“Long range modes in Bluetooth 5 include the introduction of two new data rates at 500kbs and 125kbs,” continues John Leonard, Product Marketing Manager at Nordic Semiconductor. “With associated coding in the radio they significantly increase range by up to 4x. Together with the increased maximum output power on the nRF52840 a total link budget of approximately 111dBm can be achieved. This is a very significant increased compared to previous Bluetooth standards and makes Bluetooth 5 a real candidate for in-home, whole-house coverage applications where penetration through walls and objects is a necessity.”

“With this release Nordic Semiconductor yet again shows the critical importance of developing software in-house in order to deliver robust, reliable, and high performance leading-edge software to complement its products in a very fast moving industry,” adds Geir Langeland, Nordic Semiconductor's Director of Sales & Marketing. “Nordic is committed to this approach as it brings the flexibility and security that developers using Nordic’s Bluetooth low energy wireless technology have come to love and expect.

“Indeed, since Bluetooth low energy’s introduction Nordic has developed over 130 home-grown software stacks to take advantage of Bluetooth’s continuous program of evolution and completed 100 million connection transactions in our test-suites to date.”

Langeland concludes: “Bluetooth 5 represents a quantum industry shift for Bluetooth and is why we think it’s really important to launch not just our new Bluetooth 5-ready chips but also all the software tools developers may require to start developing applications immediately,” comments Geir Langeland, Nordic Semiconductor's Director of Sales & Marketing. “Bluetooth 5 and Nordic’s latest nRF52840 and the production-ready nRF52832 open up a whole new world of possibilities for single-chip Bluetooth® low energy applications, and so from a commercial-perspective there is no time to waste and therefore we wanted to ensure our customers had the tools they need to start developing Bluetooth 5 applications and products straight away.”

Developers can begin developing for Bluetooth 5 today on the nRF52840 and the nRF52832 with the S140 v5-alpha and the S132 v5-alpha SoftDevices available for download at www.nordicsemi.com.

For additional Nordic product information, samples or technical support, contact Symmetry Electronics, an authorized distributor of industry leading wireless, audio/video and embedded chips, modules and dev/eval tools. www.symmetryelectronics.com/contact or call (877) 466-9722.