Nordic Semiconductor Unveils 2.4GHz-Only nRF7001 by Removing 5GHz Radios from Wi-Fi 6 IC

To create the nRF7001, Nordic Semiconductor has removed 5GHz radios from their recent nRF7002 Wi-Fi 6 companion IC, resulting in a 2.4GHz-only radio companion.

This can be utilized with Nordic's nRF52 (specifically the nRF52840) and nRF53 multi-protocol systems-on-chip ICs, their nRF9160 cellular IoT system-in-package (supporting LTE-M/NB-IoT), and third-party communication ICs. The nRF7001 has several features such as secure Wi-Fi connectivity, Station (STA), software-emulated Access Point (SoftAP), Wi-Fi Direct operation, Wi-Fi-assisted location based on SSID scanning, and compatibility with Wi-Fi 4 (IEEE 802.11b, a, g, n) as well as Wi-Fi 6 (ax).

It also supports Target Wake Time (TWT) for power conservation, has a single spatial stream, 20MHz channel bandwidth, 64 QAM (MCS7), OFDMA, up to 86Mbit/s PHY throughput, and BSS colouring. Packaging options include 6 x 6mm QFN. To support design, the existing nRF7002 development kit is usable, as nRF7001 emulation on that is supported by the ‘nRF Connect’ SDK (software development kit).