With the introduction of the nRF7000 Wi-Fi companion IC, Nordic Semiconductor, a global leader in low-power wireless connectivity, claims it was the world’s first sole supplier of a complete silicon-to-cloud locationing solution with Wi-Fi, cellular IoT, and GNSS. Nordic’s single-vendor solution, combined with the company’s world-class tech support, will simplify and accelerate product development of applications based on Wi-Fi locationing, the company claimed.
The new nRF7000 companion IC is a unique low-power Wi-Fi 6 chip, optimized for Wi-Fi network scanning on both the 2.4- and 5 GHz Wi-Fi frequency bands. Together with Nordic’s nRF91 Series cellular IoT System-in-Package (SiP), the nRF7000 enables SSID-based Wi-Fi locationing. Nordic’s SSID-based Wi-Fi locationing enables the acquisition of accurate location fixes in an extremely power-efficient manner both indoors and outdoors, in urban and suburban areas. This is a valuable complement to GNSS, especially in buildings and in dense urban areas where GNSS can fail due to signal fading and interruptions. Scanning for Wi-Fi SSIDs for locationing is commonplace in products such as smartphones.
The nRF7000 IC is highly optimized for ultra low power Wi-Fi SSID scanning and does not support data communication via Wi-Fi. The optimization enables Nordic’s Wi-Fi locationing solution to offer a unique balance between power consumption and location precision.
Image credit: Nordic Semiconductor