NINA-B4 modules from u-blox target IoT

U-blox has specified Nordic’s nRF52833 Bluetooth Low Energy (Bluetooth LE) System-on-Chip (SoC) to power its NINA-B4 stand-alone Bluetooth 5.1 modules.

The small (10 by 15 by 2.2 mm) Bluetooth LE/Bluetooth 5.1 MCU modules with open CPU architecture have been optimised for, and can be supplied preinstalled with, Wirepas Massive (previously Wirepas Mesh), a decentralized large-scale mesh networking solution.

The NINA-B4 series includes the NINA-B406, which comes with an internal PCB antenna (providing a robust low-profile solution with high performance and extensive range), and NINA-B400, which integrates a U.FL connector for use with an external antenna of the developer’s choice. The NINA-B4 series also comes with u-blox’s u-connect software, supporting dozens of use cases and providing an easy-to-use interface to configure the connectivity required from an external application host.

The NINA-B4 module is suitable for running Wirepas Massive and can be deployed in smart tracking, smart logistics, smart building, smart industry, and smart metering applications, or whenever there is a need for large-scale industrial-grade network deployments.

The NINA-B4 module also supports Bluetooth 5.1 and can operate at an extended temperature range up to 105 °C. Designed to act as both a transmitter and receiver (using angle-of-arrival (AoA) and angle-of-departure (AoD) direction finding), the NINA-B4 modules bring the benefits of high-precision positioning to indoor applications. The integrated nRF52833 SoC’s multiprotocol radio is capable of all direction finding features for AoA and AoD applications. The SoC’s memory allocation enables integration of advanced embedded customer applications.

The Nordic’s nRF52833 advanced multiprotocol SoC combines a 64 MHz, 32-bit Arm Cortex M4 processor with floating point unit (FPU), with a 2.4 GHz multiprotocol radio (supporting 2.4 GHz RF protocol software in addition to Bluetooth 5.2, Bluetooth mesh, Bluetooth Direction Finding, 2 Mbps throughput, and long range plus Thread, Zigbee and IEEE 802.15.4 software), featuring +8 dBm maximum TX power and -95 dBm RX sensitivity.

The SoC incorporates a significant amount of Flash (512 kB) and RAM (128 kB) memory and a range of analogue and digital interfaces such as NFC-A, ADC, hgh-speed 32 MHz SPI, UART/SPI/TWI, PWM, I2S and PDM.

In addition to support for Thread, Zigbee and Bluetooth through the nRF Connect SDK, the SoC is also supported by the S113, 122, or S140 SoftDevices, Nordic’s Bluetooth RF protocol stacks.