nRF54L Series Express

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2.4 GHz radio transceiver

The nR54L Series SoCs contain an integrated ultra-low-power multiprotocol 2.4 GHz radio designed to support a wide range of wireless standards while keeping power consumption low. Let’s examine some of its key details. 

Wireless protocols 

The radio is qualified against Bluetooth® Core 6.0  and works with several wireless standards. These include: 

 In addition, Nordic Semiconductor’s proprietary protocols can take advantage of the radios’ high performance, offering speeds up to 4 Mbps (1 Mbps and 2Mbps modes are also available).  

Radio performance 

The radio offers configurable output power, ranging from -46 dBm up to 8 dBm (4dBm for nRF54LS05A and nRF54LS05B). The 1 dBm step size (available from -10 dBm to 8 dBm) allows precise adjustment to suit the given environment and device requirements. This allows for precise output power control when working with constant gain RF front-end Modules (FEMs).  

Using Bluetooth LE at a 1 Mbps data rate and powered at 3 V, the SoCs consume 9.8 mA during transmission (8 dBm) and 3.4 mA during reception with 1 Mbps, making them very efficient. The radio offers various data rates depending on the protocol used: 

  • For Bluetooth Low Energy – Offers 125 kbps and 500 kbps for Long Range, and 1 Mbps and 2 Mbps in standard mode.  
  • For IEEE 802.15.4 – Supports a 250 kbps mode. 
  • Nordic proprietary protocol – Allows speed up to 4 Mbps. 

Radio subsystems and features 

The radio transceiver integrates a set of subsystems that handle most of the packet forming and transmission phases, leaving only the necessary actions on the application side.  

RADIO block diagram

  • EasyDMA – Stores the payload in RAM, making it accessible for the application to read. 
  • Packet assembler/disassembler – Adds necessary fields to the packets; the application only needs to supply or extract payload.  
  • CRC verification/generation – Ensures the integrity of the CRC field or generates a CRC field for a given packet. 
  • Whitening/de-whitening – Reduces signal distortion and evenly distributes signal power across the frequency band. 
  • Address matching mechanism – Filters incoming packets based on their addresses. 
  • Receive signal strength indicator (RSSI) – Filters and measures the power of the received signal. The stored sample can be used to detect activity and assess signal quality. 
  • Bit counter – Generates an event after a specific number of bits have been received or transmitted. 

Additional features in the radio: 

  • Receive consecutive packets – Allows the reception of consecutive packets without the need to disable and re-enable the transceiver.
  • Interframe spacing – Configures the time interval (in microseconds) between receiving and transmitting packets.
  • On-the-fly package encryption/decryption: Enables the radio to work directly with the decryption/encryption block. For details, see the CCM — AES CCM mode encryption page.  

Bluetooth Low Energy 

One of the radio’s subsystems is only for Bluetooth LE operation and similar implementations. 

Device address match – Enables on-the-fly device address matching while receiving a packet over-the-air (up to 8 different addresses).  

The features described under Radio subsystems are all used by the Bluetooth LE stack with little involvement by the application. 

802.15.4 

The 802.15.4 standard requires a mechanism that allows the devices to check if the channel is free before transmitting data, to avoid disrupting other devices.  

Energy detection – The 802.15.4 standard requires the ability to measure the power of the signal to check the presence of activity. The nRF54L Series radio peripheral uses RSSI to detect and convert the energy into the format required by the standard.  

Clear channel assessment – When the energy of the channel activity is determined, the Clear Channel assessment (CCA) mechanism can use it to generate a BUSY or IDLE event depending on the channel activity.  

The CCA feature on the nRF54L Series supports three modes: 

  • CCA mode 1 – Determines if the medium is busy based on energy above the ED threshold. 
  • CCA mode 2 – Assesses if the medium is busy through the presence of a signal compliant with the 802.15.4 standard. 
  • CCA mode 3 – Uses a combination of both energy level and compliant signal to determine if the medium is busy. 

Link quality indication (LQI) generation: After a packet is received, a LQI is generated based on the measured RSSI, and appended to the data. 

In addition to these features, the 802.15.4 stack also uses the subsystems in the radio.  

Proprietary protocols 

The radio subsystems allow you to create your own proprietary protocols by handling many operations necessary for wireless communication.  

These subsystems don’t just exist individually, they’re connected and can offload most of the tasks needed for the packet creation and communication without application interference.  

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