NXP Announces Its Latest Low-Power IoT Wi-Fi 6 and BLE Microcontroller Module: The RW610FML

NXP Semiconductors has announced a new Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) communications module targeting low-power Internet of Things (IoT) devices — and featuring an integrated Arm Cortex-M33 core to act as a dedicated communications coprocessor or take on a dual-role for hardware control itself: the RW610FML.

"The RW610FML is a low-power, high-performance Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth [Low Energy] combo module supporting IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac/ax and Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) protocols," explains NXP's Rakshit Grover of the new part. "The RW610FML module integrates embedded memory and an MCU [Microcontroller Unit] with a rich set of peripheral interfaces, enabling flexible design and broad application support across IoT, industrial, and consumer devices."

The RW610FML module is built around NXP's RW610 system-on-chip, which includes a single Arm Cortex-M33 microcontroller core running at up to 260MHz, 1.2MB of on-chip static RAM (SRAM), and a quad serial peripheral interface (QSPI) with support for execute-in-place (XIP) from external flash or the on-board 8MB flash. A second SPI interface supports optional pseudo-static RAM (PSRAM) memory expansion.

The module's radio block includes a Wi-Fi 6 1×1 dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHz radio supporting 20MHz channel widths and up to 114Mb/s peak data rates plus a Bluetooth Low Energy radio supporting up to 2Mb/s data rates in high-speed mode. Perhpherals include Secure Digital Input Output (SDIO) 3.0, USB, UART, I2C< SPI, I2S, buses, LCD and microphone interfaces, digital to analog and analog to digital converters (DACs and ADCs), an analog comparator, support for a Universal Subscriber Identity Module (USIM), general-purpose input/output (GPIO) with pulse-width modulation (PWM) support, and debugging via JTAG and serial wire debug (SWD).

In addition to the bare module itself NXP has also launched a ready-to-go development board dubbed the FRDM-RW610FML, which pairs the module with a carrier board providing easy access to its peripheral interfaces. More information on both the module and the carrier board is available on NXP's product page, though with the part listed as in pre-production pricing has not yet been disclosed.