Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 was introduced in late 2016 as one of the first Bluetooth 5 ready SoC, and it’s the only part from Nordic that fully supports Bluetooth 5 longer range.
But the chip is actually a multiprotocol SoC and beside Bluetooth, 802.15.4, Ant, Thread and 2.4 GHz proprietary are also supported. The company has now announced one more wireless protocol working on nRF52840: Zigbee 3.0.
The company has released the first engineering release for Zigbee on nRF52840, but the production grade Zigbee 3.0 certified release is planed for H2 2018. The new protocol will be enabled in the S410 v6.0 SoftDevice release.
Bluetooth and Zigbee can run concurrently meaning for example you could create an nRF52840 gateway to control Zigbee smart lights from a smartphone connected over Bluetooth 5. The SDK includes examples for concurrent operation of Zigbee and Bluetooth 5 for a smart light bulb and switch.
The company further explains raw data throughput rates of 250kbs can be achieved at 2.4GHz (16 channels) transmission distances range from 10 to 100 meters, and the technology supports large mesh networks and low power operation for extending battery life.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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