Nordic Semiconductor designs and produces SoC, SiP, and connectivity solutions for the ISM bands at 5 GHz, 2.4 GHz and 868/915 MHz bands. The products operate on low power, enabling wireless and IoT applications to use little battery and run on harvested energy. Current products include SoCs incorporating the
ARM Cortex-M0,
ARM Cortex-M4 and
ARM Cortex-M33 microcontroller cores. Popular products include the nRF24L01+ and the nRF24LE1, both using the lightweight and proprietary "Enhanced ShockBurst" (ESB)
protocol stack in 2.4 GHz ISM band. The nRF24L01+ is a simple
transceiver with some
logic to implement the protocol stack and is connected to a microcontroller via an
SPI bus, while the nRF24LE1 can be seen as an nRF24L01 and a microcontroller in the same
chip.
Cellular IoT nRF91 Series SiP The nRF9160 SiP expanded Nordic Semiconductor's lineup from mainly focusing on Bluetooth LE and other short range wireless protocol SoCs into the realm of connected devices using the cellular network for internet connectivity. The series offers
LTE-M and
NB-IoT connectivity.
Wi-Fi nRF70 Series A Wi-Fi companion IC is designed to provide Wi-Fi connectivity and functionality to existing Nordic products. Unlike other Nordic solutions, the first product, nRF7002, is strictly for connectivity.
Multi-protocol nRF54 Series SoC The nRF54 Series SoC makes it possible to reduce BOM, replacing external components through a highly integrated SoC with multiple
ARM Cortex-M33 processors running up to 320 MHz in conjunction with
RISC-V coprocessors. nRF54H20 touts efficient processing, ultra-low power radio, and minimal sleep currents, multiprotocol radio with 10 dBm TX power, -100 dBm RX sensitivity for Bluetooth LE and -104 dBm for 802.15.4., PSA Level 3 certification, secure boot, secure firmware update, secure storage, and protection against physical attacks. In EEMBC ULPMark-CM benchmarking, configured for maximum processing efficiency, the nRF54H20 scores 170 with 515 CoreMark. Configured for maximum processing performance, the nRF54H20 scores 132 with 1290 CoreMark. Compared to the nRF54H Series' GlobalFoundries 22FDX® (22 nm) process, nRF54L Series features a new hardware architecture fabricated using TSMC’s 22ULL® (22 nm) process technology.
nRF53 Series SoC The nRF5340 SoC is the world's first dual-core ARM Cortex-M33 SoC (128MHz + 64MHz), released in 2020. This is Nordic's new generation of wireless SoCs with a separate processor core to handle connectivity, thus freeing up resources for handling more demanding applications on the main processor's core without compromising on the connectivity.
nRF52 Series SoCs v2 The nRF52 Series SoCs was the second short-range wireless SoCs from Nordic Semiconductor, building on its experience developing the nRF51 Series. The nRF52 series, especially the nRF52840 and nRF52833, is very successful and exists in millions of popular consumer devices in the world today, among them wireless mice, keyboards and audio devices. The popularity of Nordic's nRF52 series allows Nordic Semiconductor to maintain a 40% worldwide market share in the Bluetooth LE segment. The nRF52833 SoC features a 64 MHz ARM Cortex-M4. This SoC supports an extended temperature range of -40˚C to 105˚C. The SoC has a 1:4 RAM to Flash storage ratio (128 KB : 512 KB). Being a wireless-focused chip, the nRF52833 is equipped with an output power of +8 dBm.
nRF51 Series SoCs The
nRF51 Series SoCs was the first short-range wireless SoC series from Nordic Semiconductor; it was superseded by the nRF52 Series SoCs.
Power management (nPM) Dedicated Power Management ICs (PMIC) integrate a number of functions to reduce the size, improve the power efficiency and maximise the system's battery life. The nPM Series supports power management, battery charging, and state-of-charge prediction using integrated battery current, voltage, and temperature measurements for precision estimation.
Range extenders (nRF21) The transmit (TX) output power and the receiver sensitivity directly influence the link budget of a connection. An RF front-end module (FEM) increases the range at which two wireless devices can communicate while enhancing link robustness. nRF21540 RF FEM can boost wireless range up to 10x.
Cloud services nRF Cloud is a platform for IoT cloud services for the nRF Series of wireless devices, including location services and Firmware Over-The-Air (FOTA).
Development software nRF Connect SDK is a software development kit for the nRF Series of wireless devices. ==Wireless technologies and protocols==