Nordic nRF51822 BLE and Proprietary 2.4GHz SoC Shortlisted for Top Electronics Industry Awards

In the U.S. the nRF51822 has been shortlisted by Design News magazine as one of the finalists in its '2012 Golden Mousetrap Awards'.

The Nordic Semiconductor nRF51822 is part of Nordic's latest nRF51 Series of SoCs (see 'About nRF51 Series' below) that have re-defined the leading edge of the ULP wireless industry in terms of power consumption and performance, and come with an exceptionally easy-to-use and versatile development platform based on Nordic SDKs (software development kits) and a unique yet powerful separation of protocol stack and application code for the first time.

The nRF51822 is also the world's first multiprotocol ultra low power 2.4GHz System-on-Chip SoC wireless connectivity solution to be capable of concurrently or non-concurrently supporting both Bluetooth low energy (a hallmark ultra low power feature of the latest Bluetooth Core Specification Version 4.0 - see 'About Bluetooth low energy' below) and proprietary RF software protocols such as Nordic Semiconductor's Gazell.

The nRF51822 integrates a multiprotocol radio and a 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0 based processor and has been optimized for ultra low power wireless applications. The chip offers -92.5dB RX sensitivity in Bluetooth low energy mode; up to +4dBm output power in all modes; up to 9.5dBm improvement in link budget compared to previous generations of class-leading Nordic chips, and sub-10mA peak currents running off a 3V coin cell battery for months or years of battery life (depending on the application). The nRF51822 is also 100 percent on air compatible with Nordic's existing nRF24L series ICs ('integrated circuits' or 'chips'). (See 'About nRF51822' below for more information).

"The development of our flagship nRF51 Series demanded a huge amount of engineering effort and financial investment to produce something that was genuinely game-changing within the ULP wireless market," comments Svenn-Tore Larsen, CEO of Nordic Semiconductor. "The nRF51 Series was not, therefore, developed without risk for our company and it therefore makes me extremely proud to see one of its first product members - the nRF51822 - given such independent and prestigious recognition from two of the world's leading electronics design magazines."