Swiss-based global semiconductor, module, and IoT services company, u-blox, has announced a new series of professional grade, multiprotocol modules designed to help companies across a broad spectrum of IoT market segments bring new wireless products to market faster. The ‘NORA-B2’ series of modules are built on Nordic’s next generation nRF54L15 SoC, and provide a cost-effective entry point for wireless connectivity for IoT applications.

“NORA-B2 brings ultra-low power wireless connectivity to the mass market,” says Hari Vigneswaran, Product Manager at u-blox. “This will streamline wireless projects in terms of complexity, cost, and footprint, opening new use cases across healthcare, smart home, industrial automation, and indoor positioning.”

Next generation processing power

The NORA-B2 series comprises the globally certified ‘NORA -B201’ and ‘NORA-B206’ modules, both based on Nordic’s next-generation nRF54L15 SoC. The SoC integrates a 128 MHz Arm® Cortex®-M33 processor, a RISC-V co-processor, and an ultra-low power multiprotocol 2.4 GHz radio. The generous 1.5 MB non-volatile memory (NVM) and 256 KB RAM can run multiple wireless protocols concurrently, including Bluetooth® LE, Bluetooth Mesh, Thread, Matter, Zigbee, Amazon Sidewalk, and 2.4 GHz proprietary protocols. The NORA-B201 comes in a 10.4 by 11.2 by 1.9 mm form factor and provides an antenna pin for applications requiring a customized antenna solution. The NORA-B206 comes in a 10.4 by 14.3 by 1.9 mm form factor and integrates a high-performance patented PCB antenna.

Both NORA-B2 modules offer additional features and interfaces including NFC, SPI, I2C, 31 GPIOs, and 14-bit ADC, an operating temperature range of -40 to +85 °C, as well as improved security. Key market segments include industrial automation, medical and healthcare, telematics, and smart cities and buildings.

Nordic has high quality customer support and a very easy to use software development kit which we see as important for our customers.

Håkan Svegerud, Senior Director, Head of Product Management and Strategy at u-blox

Easy-to-use SDK

“Our business relationship with Nordic has only become stronger over the years, so it is natural for us to expand our portfolio now with modules built on these next-generation SoCs,” says Håkan Svegerud, Senior Director, Head of Product Management and Strategy at u-blox. “In addition to the good relationship, Nordic has high quality customer support and a very easy to use software development kit which we see as important for our customers.”

u-blox has also announced the powerful ‘ALMA-B1’ series modules that employ Nordic Semiconductor’s new revolutionary nRF54H20 SoC targeted at high-end wireless end products. The ALMA-B1 series comprises the globally certified ‘ALMA-B101’ and ‘ALMA-B106’ modules, both taking advantage of the nRF54H20’s multiple Arm® Cortex®-M33 processors and multiple RISC-V coprocessors, as well as 2 MB of NVM and 1 MB RAM, capable of powering machine learning (ML) and sensor fusion at the edge.

Early samples of ALMA-B1 and NORA-B2 are available, please contact u-blox for further details.