Nordic Semiconductor and Qorvo to collaborate on dual Ultra wide Band and BLE LE based solutions

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay 

Nordic Semiconductor and Qorvo ,announced that they are expanding their partnership portfolio to include Dual Ultra Wide Band(UWB) and Bluetooth Low Energy connectivity Solutions.It is interesting to note that Qorva recently acquired UWB pioneer Decaware an Irish company.Both companies are complementing each other's expertise in Low Power Cellular IOT space

Nordic and Quorvo have worked together for many years on Nordic's nRF9160 System-in-package(SIP) which supports LTE-NB-IOT and GPS.Nordic used RF Front End,advanced packaging and Micro Shield Technology to deliver high performance,compact,Low Power  Award winning IOT Cellular nRF9160 Sip.

Nordic Semiconductor and Decawave also worked together in the past,Decawave integrated Nordic's nRF52832 System-onChip(SOC) in their DWM1001C UWB and Bluetoth LE Module.Both the companies agreed that UWB/Bluetooth LE module will be jointly designed  and will include Qorvo's UWB transeiver and Nordic's nRF52833 SOC..This Nordic's SOC is 105°C qualified Bluetooth 5.2 SoC which supports Bluetooth LE ,Direction finding and mesh topology.

Nordic Semiconductor and Qorvo expecting release of high performance products combining Bluetooth LE and UWB capabilities in the near future with this partnership.

Commenting on this collaboration David Fullwood,Vice President of Sales for Mobile, Qorvo says “Nordic and Qorvo have built a solid partnership developing next generation cellular IoT solutions with combined expertise from both companies,” He further stated “We expect our collaboration on Bluetooth LE and UWB will complement our partnership and accelerate the adoption of location-based technologies and services for a new generation of products.”

Geir Langeland, Director of Sales & Marketing, Nordic Semiconductor has similar thoughts  to share and while commenting he said “Qorvo is the leader in RF Front Ends for cellular IoT systems, and Nordic is the leader in low power cellular IoT and Bluetooth LE”. He also expressed  “With the addition of UWB to Qorvo’s product range, our collaboration now covers three complementary technologies across a wide range of applications, enabling future innovations for our common customers' across multiple industries.”

Bluetooth LE and Ultra wide Band are complementary technologies.Their combination can be suitable for variety of consumer and Industrial IOT based solutions ,especially the scenarios where there is great demand for accurate positioning of the objects and proximity awareness.Ultra Wide band is specifically designed for providing micro-positioning accuracy in products like smart phones,smart homes and Asset tracking,Human tracking in Industry or Home Automation or Automotive fields.When combined low power and mature protocol like Bluetooth LE and UWB guaranteed interoperability ,it becomes a fit case.

Nordic's SOCs are specifically designed for low power consumption and wake-up UWB transceiver when needed which will reduce the collective power consumption of the module in critical asynchronous joining or discovering scenarios.

We can hope ,Nordic and Qorvo partnership will roll out high performance ,low power UWB-Bluetooth LE products in the near future.