ordic Semiconductor has taken 5GHz radios out of its recent nRF7002 Wi-Fi 6 companion IC, to create the 2.4GHz-only nRF7001.

“nRF7001 lowers the cost of the bill-of-materials for designs requiring single band capability for smart home, smart city, industrial automation and other low power Wi-Fi IoT applications”, it said. It “offers all the Wi-Fi functionality of the nRF7002, including compliance with the latest standard and power saving features”.

As a radio companion, it can be used with the company’s nRF52 (Nordic suggests the nRF52840) and nRF53 multi-protocol systems-on-chip ICs, the nRF9160 cellular IoT (LTE-M/NB-IoT) system-in-package, and third-party comms ICs.

Amongst its features are secured Wi-Fi connectivity, Wi-Fi-assisted location based on SSID (service set identifier) scanning, Station (STA), software-emulated Access Point (SoftAP), Wi-Fi Direct operation and compatibility with Wi-Fi 4 (IEEE 802.11b, a, g, n) as well as Wi-Fi 6 (ax). Target Wake Time (TWT) is supported for power saving.

Interfacing with its host is via SPI or Quad SPI (QSPI), and the output is a single spatial stream, 20MHz channel bandwidth, 64 QAM (MCS7), OFDMA, up to 86Mbit/s PHY throughput and BSS colouring.

Packaging is 6 x 6mm QFN.

To support design, the existing nRF7002 development kit can be used, as nRF7001 emulation on that is supported by the ‘nRF Connect’ SDK (software development kit).