Stefano Viola’s NiCE5340 SoM Pushes Miniaturization Boundaries

Design challenges are a unbelievable technique to hone your abilities and purchase new ones. Stefano Viola, an skilled electronics engineer, sought a miniaturization problem. This journey led to a system-on-module (SoM) named NiCE5340, an ingeniously tiny PCB that merges a Bluetooth SoC, FPGA, and a big selection of sensors.

“I had been questioning for a while what can be the results of combining a strong low-power MCU with an equally versatile low-power FPGA.” —Stefano Viola

Viola packed many built-in circuits (ICs) onto NiCE5340’s 16- by 29-millimeter printed circuit board. A Nordic Semiconductor nRF5340 system-on-chip (SoC) is on the middle. Subsequent to it’s a Lattice semiconductor iCE40 Extremely Plus FPGA. Not less than 11 sensors complement these two processing chips.

The nRF53 SoC incorporates two Arm Cortex-M33 processors and a 2.4 GHz radio. The RF block helps Bluetooth 5.4, Bluetooth LE (BLE), Thread, Zigbee, and proprietary protocols. An nPM1100, additionally from Nordic, gives energy administration and LiPo battery charging.

Lattice’s iCE40 FPGA has gained notoriety due to the open supply instruments that generate bitstreams for these components. Viola linked the iCE40 to the nRF53 by way of Quad-SPI (QSPI) and I2C. Its IO pins escape to pads on the again.

Whereas the NiCE5340 incorporates almost each sensor kind in its design, Viola acknowledges that not all of them (collectively) might have a sensible utility. Nevertheless, the potential makes use of of those sensors are huge, starting from environmental monitoring to well being monitoring, making the NiCE5340 a flexible and adaptable PCB.

• 6DOF IMU: LSM6DSMTR (STMicroelectronics)
• Biosignal changing unit: AS7057-BWL (Osram)
• Magnetometer: MMC3630KJ (Memsic)
• SAR sensor (contact): SX9328ICSTRT (Semtech)
• PDM MEMS MIC: ICS-41351 (TDK)
• Humidity/temperature: SHTC3 (Sensirion)
• Haptic driver: DRV2605LYZF (Texas Devices)
• RGB IR coloration sensor: BH1749NUC-E2 (Rohm)
• Barometric strain sensor: DPS310XTSA1 (Infineon)
• Cost/discharge present measurement: INA231AIYFDT (Texas Devices)
• RTC: MAX31342EWA+T (Analog Units)

When you examine the small board intently, you would possibly discover no apparent technique to program both the nRF53 or the iCE40. Because the board has an onboard chip antenna and an MHF4 connector for an exterior antenna, one choice is to program the nRF53 over-the-air (OTA). The FPGA may be programmable OTA by way of the nRF53 as properly. Nevertheless, Viola nonetheless wants to check this functionality.

The PCB’s again has land-grid-array (LGA)-style pads. Viola additionally designed a provider board to connect the NiCE5340 PCB. The pads escape many extra alerts from the SoC, together with the nRF53’s native USB port. A flat ribbon cable connector may additionally assist the nRF53’s NFC antenna!

As Viola conceived this board as a design train, the long-term intentions are but to be absolutely outlined. The NiCE5340 GitHub repository already hosts a PDF schematic, and Viola says it can ultimately embody code examples. When you’re wanting to discover this board’s potential or have options for its design, attain out to Stefano Viola by way of this LinkedIn publish.