Nordic Selects NXP Cortex-M0 Microcontroller for Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy Reference Designs

Nordic’s reference design delivers over a year of battery lifetime for the wireless mouse, and up to 10 years for the keyboard, from a single pair of AA batteries.

In addition, Nordic has introduced the LPC1114 Cortex-M0 microcontroller in its nRFready µBlue Smart Remote reference design for remote control of connected TVs and set-top-boxes. Bluetooth low energy technology enables a new ecosystem of battery-powered devices to interact with Bluetooth Smart Ready hosts, such as mobile phones, tablets, PCs, TVs and STBs, without the penalty of a large reduction in battery life. The ecosystem is expected to expand significantly within the next two years: ABI Research predicts that 2 billion Bluetooth-enabled devices will ship in 2012 and 3 billion in 2014.

“After an extensive comparison of popular low-cost microcontrollers, we concluded that NXP’s Cortex-M0 microcontroller was simply the best choice – delivering the high-performance system capabilities necessary to implement Bluetooth low energy, while meeting our stringent low-power requirements,” said Thomas Embla Bonnerud, director of product management, Nordic Semiconductor. In the nRFready µBlue Desktop reference design, the LPC1114 microcontroller senses user inputs such as keystrokes, and controls and communicates with Nordic’s nRF8001 Bluetooth low energy connectivity radio, which transmits data wirelessly to a Bluetooth Smart Ready smartphone or PC.

In the Smart Remote reference design, LPC1114 performs multi-tasking by detecting multi-touch inputs, sensing QWERTY keyboard strokes, calculating the 6-axis gyro inputs, and controlling the nRF8001 Bluetooth connectivity IC. Compared to typical Bluetooth solutions, the nRFready µBlue reference designs significantly reduce system power consumption at both the host and the devices.“Nordic’s nRFready µBlue reference designs are making it easy to bring Bluetooth low energy computer peripherals and other devices to market quickly, and we’re pleased that our Cortex-M0 LPC1114 microcontroller is part of those designs,” said Jan Jaap Bezemer, director of marketing, microcontroller business line, NXP Semiconductors. “For emerging smart system implementations, NXP Cortex-M0 brings together an optimal combination of very low power and very low cost, along with 32-bit resources that enrich the end-user experience.”