NRF7292 Wifi SoC

Newracom is a fabless semiconductor company that is the first to develop Wi-Fi HaLow System on Chip(SoC), conventionalizing ideas from industrial automation to smart homes and cities with endless possibilities for secure connections.

Today, I would like to introduce a long range Wifi SoC solution (NRC7292). It can support up > 1kilo meters distance.

NRC7292 is the industry’s first system on a chip (SoC) that is compliant with the IEEE 802.11ah standard. Operating in the Sub 1GHz license-exempt band, it offers a much greater range over 2.4GHz and 5GHz technology. 1/2/4MHz channel widths with optional short guard interval (SGI) yield 150 Kbps to 15 Mbps PHY throughput which can support low-rate sensors to the high-rate surveillance camera application. The protocol’s power-saving mechanisms like a longer sleep time greatly reduce power consumption and hence increase battery life.

System Block Diagram

Specification

CPU

  • ARM Cortex-M3 for Application
  • ARM Cortex-M0 for WLAN
  • Mailbox for communication

Memory

  • 32KB Boot ROM for M0
  • 32KB Boot ROM for M3
  • 752KB System SRAM
  • XIP with cache (2 ways, 32KB)

Communication Peripherals

  • GPIO X 54
  • SPI X 4
  • UART X 4
  • I2C X 4
  • 9-bit ADC X

RF Transceiver

  • Single-ended RF ports
  • Frequency band: 750 to 950MHz
  • Linear TX output power: 0dBm
  • TX gain range: 30dB
  • RX noise figure: <4dB
  • Max. input level: -10dBm
  • 10bits ADC and DAC

For example, NRF7292A connects the RF Front-End to have the range extension, UART port for the debugging or DFU mode, and data communication with I2C / SPI.

With the dual embedded ARM Cortex-M0 and Cortex-M3 processor, NRC7292 can be used either as a standalone device or a slave to a host processor via the serial peripheral interface (SPI) or universal asynchronous receiver transmitter (UART) interface. In addition, it can support both Station and Access Point roles.

Performance of the Wifi HaLow technology (refer to the doc),

Wi-Fi HaLow uses OFDM modulation, which has been used in previous Wi-Fi versions since 802.11g. The distance can be supported up to 1Km with a low power connectivity solution.

If you would like to know more details, you can go through Newracom Github.