Features of nRF52 Series

The nRF52 Series of System-on-Chip (SoC) devices embed an Arm Cortex-M4 processor with Nordic Semiconductor’s 2.4 GHz RF transceivers. All of the nRF52 Series SoCs have support for Bluetooth® 5 features, in addition to multiprotocol capabilities.

To get started with the nRF52 Series, download and run the Quick Start application from nRF Connect for Desktop.

For additional information, see the following documentation:

Secure bootloader chain

nRF52 Series devices support a secure bootloader solution based on the chain of trust concept.

See Secure bootloader chain for more information and instructions on how to enable one or more bootloaders in your application.

Supported protocols

The nRF52 Series multiprotocol radio supports Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) including Bluetooth Mesh, proprietary protocols (including Enhanced ShockBurst and Gazell), ANT, Thread, Zigbee, and 802.15.4. Standard interface protocols like NFC and USB are supported on a range of the devices in the series and with supporting software.

Note

Currently, the nRF Connect SDK does not support ANT.

The following sections give pointers on where to start when working with these protocols.

To test the general capabilities of the 2.4 GHz radio transceiver, use the Radio test (short-range) sample.

Bluetooth Low Energy

When you develop a Bluetooth LE application, you must use the Bluetooth software stack. This stack is split into two core components: the Bluetooth Host and the Bluetooth LE Controller.

Nordic Semiconductor nRF52 Series devices have full support for the nRF Connect SDK Bluetooth stack. The Controller user guide contains more information about the two available Bluetooth LE Controllers and instructions for switching between them.

See Bluetooth for documentation on the Bluetooth Host and open source Bluetooth LE Controller. For documentation about the SoftDevice Controller and information on which controller variants support which chips, see SoftDevice Controller.

The nRF Connect SDK contains a variety of Bluetooth samples that target nRF52 Series devices. In addition, you can run the Bluetooth samples that are included from Zephyr.

For available libraries, see Bluetooth libraries and services (nRF Connect SDK) and API (Zephyr).

Bluetooth Mesh

Bluetooth Mesh is a mesh networking solution based on Bluetooth LE, developed by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG). It is optimized for creating large-scale device networks, and implemented according to Bluetooth Mesh Profile Specification v1.0.1 and Bluetooth Mesh Model Specification v1.0.1.

Bluetooth Mesh networking allows one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many communication, using the Bluetooth LE protocol to exchange messages between the mesh nodes in the network.

The nRF Connect SDK contains a variety of Bluetooth Mesh samples that target nRF52 Series devices. In addition, you can run the Bluetooth Mesh samples that are included from Zephyr.

For available libraries, see Bluetooth Mesh libraries (nRF Connect SDK) and Bluetooth Mesh Profile (Zephyr). See the Bluetooth Mesh user guide for information about how to use the supplied libraries and work with Bluetooth Mesh.

Enhanced ShockBurst

Enhanced ShockBurst (ESB) is a basic protocol supporting two-way data packet communication including packet buffering, packet acknowledgment, and automatic retransmission of lost packets. ESB provides radio communication with low power consumption, and the implementation is small in code size and easy to use.

See the Enhanced ShockBurst (ESB) user guide for information about how to work with Enhanced ShockBurst. To start developing, check out the Enhanced ShockBurst: Transmitter and Enhanced ShockBurst: Receiver samples.

Gazell

Gazell is a protocol that consists of two protocol modules: Gazell Link Layer and Gazell Pairing, where Gazell Pairing is optional and lies on top of Gazell Link Layer. The Gazell protocols are used for setting up a robust wireless link between a single Host and up to eight Devices in a star network topology. It is designed to minimize power consumption in power-sensitive wireless desktop products and is also suitable for a range of other wireless applications.

See the Gazell Link Layer user guide and the Gazell Pairing user guide for information about how to work with Gazell. To start developing, check out the Gazell samples.

Matter

Matter (formerly Project Connected Home over IP or Project CHIP) is an open-source application layer that aims at creating a unified communication standard across smart home devices, mobile applications, and cloud services. It supports a wide range of existing technologies, including Wi-Fi, Thread, and Bluetooth® LE, and uses IPv6-based transport protocols like TCP and UDP to ensure connectivity between different kinds of networks.

See the Matter user guide for information about how to work with Matter applications. To start developing, check out Matter samples.

Near Field Communication

Near Field Communication (NFC) is a technology for wireless transfer of small amounts of data between two devices that are in close proximity. The range of NFC is typically <10 cm.

nRF Connect SDK provides two protocol stacks for developing NFC applications: Type 2 Tag and Type 4 Tag. These stacks are provided in binary format in the sdk-nrfxlib repository. See Near Field Communication (NFC) for documentation about the NFC stacks, and Near Field Communication (NFC) for general information.

The NFC stack requires the NFCT driver for nRF52 devices, which is available as part of nrfx. The nrfx repository is included in the nRF Connect SDK as a module of the Zephyr repository.

See NFC samples and Libraries for NFC for lists of samples and libraries that the nRF Connect SDK provides.

USB

The nRF Connect SDK contains a USB device stack for the USB 2.0 Full Speed peripheral that is available on a number of the nRF52 devices. You can find the implementation in the Zephyr repository. See USB device support APIs for documentation and USB device support samples for a list of available samples.

The USB stack requires the USBD driver for nRF52 devices, which is available as part of nrfx. The nrfx repository is included in the nRF Connect SDK as a module of the Zephyr repository.

Thread

Thread is a low-power mesh networking technology, designed specifically for home automation applications. It is an IPv6-based standard that uses 6LoWPAN technology over the IEEE 802.15.4 protocol. You can connect a Thread mesh network to the Internet with a Thread Border Router.

The nRF Connect SDK provides support for developing Thread applications based on the OpenThread stack. The OpenThread stack is integrated into Zephyr.

See the Thread user guide on how to work with Thread. To start developing, refer to the Thread samples.

Zigbee

Zigbee is a portable, low-power software networking protocol that provides connectivity over a mesh network based on the IEEE 802.15.4 radio protocol. It also defines an application layer that provides interoperability among all Zigbee devices.

The nRF Connect SDK provides support for developing Zigbee applications based on the third-party precompiled ZBOSS stack. This stack is included as the ZBOSS Zigbee stack library in nrfxlib (version 3.11.4.0). In combination with the integrated Zephyr RTOS, Zigbee in nRF Connect SDK allows for development of low-power connected solutions.

See the Zigbee user guide on how to work with the Zigbee protocol and stack. To start developing, refer to the Zigbee samples.

Multiprotocol support

The nRF52 Series devices support running another protocol in parallel with the SoftDevice Controller. See the Multiprotocol support user guide on how to enable multiprotocol support for Thread or Zigbee in combination with Bluetooth.

The Multiprotocol Service Layer library provides services for multiprotocol applications.

Remote observability using Memfault

The nRF Connect SDK bundles support for remotely monitoring and debugging device fleets. This support enables quicker identification and triage of issues in the field and optimizes connection quality and battery life for global deployments. The collection system has been optimized to work in intermittent connectivity environments and has extremely low overhead.

The nRF Connect SDK includes out-of-the-box metrics collected for monitoring Bluetooth connectivity, such as connection time and Bluetooth thread stack usage on nRF52 Series SoCs as well as a GATT profile and example apps for easily sending the data through a mobile phone gateway.

See the Memfault integration page for more information on how to enable Memfault in your nRF Connect SDK project on an nRF52 Series device and visualize the data across the fleet and by device.