Nordic's nRF7002 Development Kit Supports Wi-Fi 6 and Other Wireless IoT Protocols That Matter

Today, Nordic Semiconductor has announced a development kit for their first Wi-Fi chip: the nRF7002 DK board, which combines the nRF7002 with an nRF5340 system-on-chip (SoC.) The development kit includes onboard antennas, Arduino-compatible pin headers, flexible power options, and a debugger making it an excellent starting point for products using wireless protocols like Bluetooth LE, Thread, and Wi-Fi.

Introduced in August 2022, the nRF7002 companion IC is a low-power Wi-Fi 6 (IEEE 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac/ax) dual-band radio (2.4 and 5 GHz) that supports WPA3, Station Mode (STA), 20 MHz channel bandwidth, and 86 Mbps PHY throughput.

Unlike Nordic's other devices, this one does not contain a general-purpose microcontroller. So your design must pair it with a host like a Nordic nRF52 (Bluetooth), nRF53 (Dual-Core, Bluetooth), or nRF91 (LTE) via SPI or QSPI.

nRF7002 DK

As the name implies, the nRF7002 DK board features the nRF7002 IC. But it's also equipped with an nRF5340 system-on-chip (SoC) and many other peripherals. One example is the SEGGER J-Link OB (onboard) programming/debugger. This integrated tool lets you flash code and set breakpoints for debugging without attaching (or purchasing) additional tools, which is a great feature on a board priced about 60 USD!

Nordic's flagship Bluetooth SoC, the nRF5340, is a dual-core Arm Cortex-M33 with multiprotocol 2.4 GHz radio. It features Bluetooth 5.3, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), LE Audio, and Bluetooth Mesh. Additionally, it supports Thread and Zigbee, which cover all of the wireless standards called-out in the smart home connectivity standard, Matter.

The nRF7002 DK breaks out many of the nRF5340's GPIOs to 2.54mm headers. Some of those pins are arranged for compatibility with Arduino shields. (Note these are only physical compatibility, there are no logic shifters.) Two LEDs and two push buttons provide basic human interaction. There are separate onboard antennas for 2.4 and 5 GHz. Both have an SWF RF connector for RF testing. The included NFC antenna attaches to a dedicated connector.

The input supply voltage for the board ranges from 2.9 to 5.0 volts and can come from USB, a LiPo battery, or an external header. The external connections enable you to attach Nordic's Power Profiler Kit II to the nRF7002 DK. That tool is a source measurement unit that allows you to monitor or profile a device's power consumption. It is beneficial for IoT device development because you can see current consumption change between sleep and active states with high resolution.

For technical information on the IC, check out the nRF7002 product page. The nRF7002 DK page has more details on the development kit.