Swiss company U-Blox has extended its wifi stand-alone module portfolio with the Nora-W3 series, making dual-band capability available for the first time in this compact form factor.

The series is aimed at market segments such as healthcare, HVAC, energy management, EV charging, professional grade power tools, and industrial sensing or monitoring applications.

As connectivity becomes more important in multiple application sectors, designers are faced with an increasing number of problems including saturation of wifi channels in the 2.4GHz band, size constraints, and the need for wifi and Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) to work together to connect to infrastructure, back-end systems, sensors and mobile devices.

Additionally, there is a constant trade-off between cost and functionality and, with many companies entering this space for the first time, a need to be able to configure setups without advanced wifi connectivity knowledge.

The Nora-W3 modules comprise dual band Wifi 4 (IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n) and Bluetooth LE 5 based upon a Realtek Ameba chipset.

“Realtek looks for strong IoT partners to bring increased functionality to our line of IoT products, especially in Industry 4.0 and medical fields,” said Realtek’s vice president Yee-Wei Huang. “U-Blox’s Nora-W3 modules including 4Mbyte flash bring ultra-low power, tiny size, high security IoT with an easy and open development environment to customers. Adding wifi dual-band and Bluetooth connectivity to a global IoT ecosystem offers an excellent user experience to customers. Combined with Realtek Ameba IoT SoC, the Nora-W3 modules are perfect for consumer electronics, medical and industrial IoT applications.”

The modules use U-ConnectXpress to simplify the task of integration for designers, only requiring the use of high-level AT commands.

They integrate two microcontrollers (MCUs): an Arm Cortex-M33 compatible, 200MHz as the main MCU, and a Cortex-M23 compatible, 20MHz for low power operation. This allows the complete communication firmware to run on the module. To smoothen the integration process, it comes with the option to use an embedded antenna.

By offering dual-band wifi and Bluetooth LE, the modules ensure a robust wifi connection in the field, partly due to the ability to operate in the less congested 5GHz band while the Bluetooth LE capability ensures ease of use and installation. The inclusion of U-ConnectXpress reduces software effort by removing the need for competence in embedded wifi and Bluetooth LE, thereby allowing products to be delivered to the market more rapidly.

These days, it is essential that any connectivity is secured. The modules offer a range of security features including secure boot, encryption, trusted execution environment, authentication and storage that protect sensitive data and prevent unauthorised access.

The modules measure 14.3 by 10.4 by 1.9mm, making them suitable for space-constrained designs, especially as an embedded antenna is included.

The Nora-W3 is an upgrade, from single to dual band, for those using the firm’s Nina-W15 while also being a smooth transition for those using Odin-W2. Since the Nora series has a common form factor and pin-out, it allows simple migration for those already using, for instance, the Nora-W1 and Nora-B1 modules.

The series come in two variants. The Nora-W36 with the U-ConnectXpress software simplifying the integration into the end-product, or the Nora-W30 with an open CPU architecture, letting users run their own applications right on the modules.

The series will be globally certified for use with the internal antenna or a range of external antennas, reducing time, cost and effort for those integrating wifi and Bluetooth LE in their designs.

“Connectivity is increasingly important in an ever-growing number of applications and, as new companies enter this sphere, they may not have extensive experience in embedded wireless,” said Erik Carlberg, senior product manager at U-Blox. “Our new Nora-W3 modules deliver dual-band capability to overcome congestion and include Bluetooth LE for convenience while containing software that allows for easy installation.”

With headquarters in Thalwil, Switzerland, U-Blox is globally present with offices in Europe, Asia, and the USA.