The module targets applications in harsh industrial environments, where reliable RF performance and small size are critical, as well as medical equipment, smart city solutions, and warehouse and retail applications.
The NORA-W10 is the successor of the NINA-W10 module, with key feature additions such as Wi-Fi 4 and Bluetooth LE 5.0, improved RF performance, built-in high-capacity flash memory, and low power consumption. The compact module builds on the Espressif ES32-S3 chipset, which hosts a powerful dual-core MCU with artificial intelligence hardware acceleration capable of enabling speech and face recognition applications at the edge.
It offers a wide range of hardware interfaces, including USB, CAN, SDIO, and display and camera interfaces.
Offering single-band 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi 4 (802.11b/g/n), NORA-W10 targets lower-end Wi-Fi segments that do not require the higher performance of higher-priced Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6 modules. With robust Wi-Fi connectivity in the field and data rates that are sufficient for many industrial applications, Wi-Fi 4 is projected to be the most widely used Wi-Fi technology in IoT applications until at least 2025 and remain on this level for foreseeable future.
Even when communicating over Wi-Fi, NORA-W10 can concurrently transmit data over Bluetooth low energy 5.0, which offers data rates up to 2 Mbps or, using Bluetooth Long Range, can increase signal propagation distances up to four-fold compared to standard Bluetooth LE. Bluetooth mesh support further extends achievable coverage by relaying messages from node to node until they reach their intended destination.
The module’s dual-core Xtensa LX7 MCU is complemented by 8 MB of flash memory, 512 kb of RAM, and a total of 38 programmable GPIOs. Advanced security features, including accelerated cryptographic flash encryption capabilities and secure boot, allow the globally certified NORA-W10 to securely run sensitive applications in a trusted and isolated environment, without requiring any additional components.
The module, which measures 10.4 x 14.3 x 1.8mm comes either with a PCB trace antenna or antenna pins and offers superior RF performance over comparable solutions on the market. Pin/pad compatibility across the u-blox NORA module family allows product developers to address multiple market segments using the same PCB design.
First samples of the NORA-W10 module and EVKs, including the USB variant, will be available in June 2022.
