Nordic Semiconductor has unveiled its silicon-to-cloud locationing solution, featuring Wi-Fi, cellular IoT, and global navigation satellite system (GNSS) capabilities. With the launch of the nRF7000 Wi-Fi companion IC, Nordic has become the world’s ‘first sole supplier’ to offer a comprehensive solution for locationing, from silicon to cloud. This all-in-one solution, coupled with Nordic’s exceptional technical support, will streamline and expedite the development of applications based on Wi-Fi locationing. The new nRF7000 companion IC is a low-power Wi-Fi 6 chip, optimised for Wi-Fi network scanning on both the 2.4- and 5 GHz Wi-Fi frequency bands. When combined with Nordic’s nRF91 Series cellular IoT system-in-package (SiP), the nRF7000 enables SSID-based Wi-Fi locationing. SSID stands for service set identifier, a unique ID made up of case-sensitive letters, numbers, and special characters like dashes, periods, and spaces.
Nordic’s SSID-based Wi-Fi locationing enables the acquisition of accurate location fixes in a power-efficient manner both indoors and outdoors, across both urban and suburban areas. The technology serves as a valuable addition to GNSS, particularly in areas with signal fading and interruptions, such as dense urban areas and buildings. The practice of scanning for Wi-Fi SSIDs for locationing is widely used in various products, including smartphones.
The nRF7000 IC is highly optimised for ultra-low power Wi-Fi SSID scanning and does not support data communication via Wi-Fi. The optimisation enables Nordic’s Wi-Fi locationing formula to offer a unique balance between power consumption and location precision.
Wi-Fi locationing
Nordic’s SSID-based Wi-Fi locationing formula uses the nRF7000 IC for Wi-Fi scanning and an nRF91 Series SiP for cellular communication to Nordic’s nRF Cloud. Instead of relying on traditional methods like cell towers or satellite signals, SSID-based Wi-Fi locationing scans the signals from nearby Wi-Fi access points to accurately determine a tracker’s location. This answer offers a location accuracy that is better than cellular-based but less accurate than GNSS while being more power-efficient than GNSS and almost as power-efficient as cellular-based.
“Nordic’s dedication to low-power wireless technology enables us to provide highly efficient solutions for numerous IoT applications,” said Kjetil Holstad, an EVP for strategy and product management at Nordic Semiconductor. “This focus culminates in a fusion of Wi-Fi locationing from the nRF7000 with the cellular and GNSS capabilities of the nRF91 Series SiP. Customers now need to come to just one place for a comprehensive, low-power locationing solution and world-class technical support. This streamlines the process and saves them significant time and money.”
“The launch of the nRF7000 IC makes the Nordic SSID-based Wi-Fi locationing solution best-in-class,” said Finn Boetius, a product marketing engineer at Nordic Semiconductor. “Competing solutions tend to use general-purpose Wi-Fi ICs for Wi-Fi locationing. These are usually oversized and not optimised for this specific use case. This makes them both more expensive and more power-hungry.
“The Nordic locationing solution allows a trade-off between position accuracy and power consumption,” continued Boetius. “In situations where high position precision is needed, GNSS is the best option. But if GNSS is unavailable or only a very rough location is needed, you can use cell-based locationing and save battery life; this will be accurate enough to tell you in which neighbourhood your device is. If you’re still without GNSS and need more, accurate information, you include Wi-Fi information at the cost of a little more power. This will be accurate enough to tell you in which house the device is located.”
Single development environment from a single vendor
Nordic’s SSID-based Wi-Fi locationing solution is supported by the nRF Connect SDK, the company’s single software development environment. When used in conjunction with Nordic’s nRF Cloud Services, the SDK enables effortless over-the-air updates for application, middleware, and/or modem firmware while providing a secure and reliable update procedure.
“If you run into technical problems on a project, dealing with multiple vendors can create a massive technical support headache,” said Ville-Veikko Helppi, a product director of cloud solutions at Nordic Semiconductor. “That multi-vendor headache is eliminated with Nordic’s one-stop-shop solution.”
Hardware availability
The nRF9160 SiP and nRF7000 IC combine to make a compact, power-efficient Wi-Fi, cellular IoT, and GNSS locationing formula. To help developers get started on IoT end-products using this technology, Nordic has launched the nRF7002 Evaluation Kit (EK). The EK is supplied in an Arduino shield form factor and can be combined with an nRF9160 Development Kit (DK).
The nRF7000 Wi-Fi Companion IC and the nRF7002 EK are available now through Nordic’s distribution partners.
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- Source: https://www.iot-now.com/2023/11/15/140980-nordic-debuts-silicon-to-cloud-locationing-solution-with-wi-fi-cellular-iot-gnss/
