Packetcraft recently announced that its protocol stack solution for Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) Audio is supported on Nordic Semiconductor‘s nRF5340 wireless system-on-chip (SoC). According to the companies, the combination of Packetcraft’s LE Audio software with Nordic’s wireless SoC is intended to accommodate ultra-low-power audio applications, such as wireless stereo earbuds and hearing aids.
LE Audio operates using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and features such capabilities as broadcast audio, multi-stream synchronized audio and a new audio codec called LC3. A demonstration of broadcast audio with Packetcraft’s software running an LC3 codec on the nRF5340 can be viewed here. Packetcraft’s software release for the nRF5340 is available now under commercial license to enterprise customers.
The nRF5340 wireless system-on-chip
The LE Audio solution consists of the following software components: Packetcraft Controller, a Bluetooth 5.2-qualified link layer, and Packetcraft Host, a Bluetooth 5.2-qualified host stack and profiles. Packetcraft Controller supports the full Bluetooth 5.2 link layer feature set, including isochronous channels and LE power control, in addition to Bluetooth 5.0 and 5.1 features like 2Mbps, long range, extended advertising, and angle-of-arrival (AoA) and angle-of-departure (AoD) direction finding.
Packetcraft Host supports the Bluetooth 5.2 LE host stack feature set, with support for EATT, along with profile software supporting the Bluetooth specifications defining LE Audio. “The high-performance nRF5340 allows Packetcraft’s software to be used to its fullest potential,” said John Yi, the firm’s CEO, in a prepared statement. “Hardware features like dual Arm Cortex-M33 cores and the low-jitter audio PLL enable our software to meet the challenging requirements of products like synchronized wireless stereo earbuds.”
“Nordic Semiconductor is excited to see Packetcraft’s complete LE Audio protocol software solution running on nRF5340, with advanced features like isochronous channels,” said Pär Håkansson, Nordic Semiconductor’s product manager for short-range IoT, in the prepared statement. “With nRF5340 now in commercial production, Packetcraft’s software with Nordic’s SoC provides the market with a commercial solution ready for the demands of innovative new LE Audio products and use cases.”
The nRF5340 has an operating temperature of up to 105 degrees Celsius (221 degrees Fahrenheit), making it suitable for LE Audio, professional lighting, wearables and other IoT applications, according to Nordic Semiconductor. The device offers Bluetooth 5.2, high-speed SPI, QSPI and USB, with high performance and memory ratings, as well as minimal current consumption.
The application processor can be clocked at either 128 or 64 MHz, using voltage-frequency scaling, with 1 MB Flash, 512 KB RAM, a floating-point unit (FPU), an 8 KB two-way associative cache and DSP instruction capabilities. The network processor can be clocked at 64 MHz and is designed for low power and efficiency (101 CoreMark/mA), with 256 KB Flash and 64 KB RAM.
The product, as noted, includes two Arm processors. Arm’s TrustZone technology provides trusted execution by implementing a division between secure and non-secure Flash, RAM, peripherals and GPIOs, while its CryptoCell-312 provides hardware-accelerated cryptography, a key management unit peripheral, root-of-trust and secure key storage.
The nRF5340 SoC supports a variety of wireless protocols and Bluetooth Low Energy, and it is capable of all AoA and AoD roles in Bluetooth Direction Finding. Mesh protocols like Bluetooth Mesh, Thread and Zigbee can be run concurrently with the BLE functionality, enabling smartphones to provision, commission, configure and control mesh nodes. NFC, ANT, 802.15.4 and 2.4 GHz proprietary protocols are also supported.
Packetcraft’s LE Audio solution for the nRF5340 is available now and is being used by multiple licensees to develop advanced Bluetooth LE Audio products, the companies report. Information about LE Audio evaluation software for the Nordic nRF5340 DK development board is available from Packetcraft.