WPG World Peace Group launches Zigbee gateway application solution based on NXP products

On April 6, 2022, WPG Holdings, a leading semiconductor component distributor dedicated to the Asia-Pacific market, announced that its subsidiary WPI has launched a Zigbee gateway application solution based on NXP's i.MX RT1062 MCU and JN5189 chip .

Figure 1- A display board of WPG's Zigbee gateway application solution based on NXP products

With the development of Internet of Things technology, wireless transmission technology applications such as BLE, WiFi, LoRa, and Zigbee are emerging in an endless stream. Among them, Zigbee network has become the first choice for many applications due to its low power consumption and many nodes. The role of Zigbee gateway is to connect Zigbee network with other wireless technologies to achieve the purpose of interconnection. WPG World Peace has launched a Zigbee gateway application solution based on NXP's Zigbee chip JN5189 and cross-border MCU i.MX RT1062, which has the advantages of efficient connection and low cost. And by combining this solution with other WiFi modules on the market, a gateway design of Zigbee to Ethernet and WiFi can be realized.

Figure 2- Physical diagram of WPG's Zigbee gateway application solution based on NXP products

The main control platform of this solution adopts NXP cross-border MCU i.MX RT1062 , which has the characteristics of high performance, low cost and easy development. In terms of internal design, the chip is equipped with Arm Cortex-M7 core, which can achieve an operating frequency of 528MHz and can meet the application with extremely high performance requirements. In addition, i.MX RT1062 also integrates 1MB RAM and can expand RAM through the bus. Not only that, the chip interface is rich, in addition to including: 8/16-bit SDRAM, 8/16-bit Nand Flash, SD/EMMC, SPI NOR/NAND Flash, parallel NOR Flash and other external memory interfaces, there are also 2 * USB OTG, 2 * Ethernet (10/100), 8 * UART, 4 * I2C, 4 * SPI, 2 * CAN and other peripheral interfaces.

In terms of Zigbee design, NXP's JN5189 is used. Its peripheral circuit is simple, and only a crystal oscillator and a small amount of capacitors are needed to build a minimum system. The internal transmission power is up to 10dB, which can greatly save costs. It has 512KB embedded flash memory, 32KB RAM and 4KB EEPROM memory, and can realize OTA upgrade function without external memory.

Figure 3-Block diagram of WPG's Zigbee gateway application solution based on NXP products

In addition, this solution not only uses Winbond's W9825G6KH-6I and W25Q256JV as SDRAM and QSPI Flash chips , which have sufficient software storage capacity for the gateway project, but also uses Shengbang Micro's synchronous step-down DC-DC SGM6014 and LDO SGM2036 as power support to achieve efficient power management.

Figure 4- Application scenario of WPG World Peace’s Zigbee gateway solution based on NXP products

Compared with most Zigbee gateway products developed based on Linux on the market, which have the pain points of high development difficulty and long development cycle, this solution is based on the FreeRTOS real-time system, combined with the high-speed processing capabilities of the cross-border MCU platform, which can handle the functions of the Zigbee gateway solution just right, thereby achieving twice the result with half the effort.

Core technology advantages:

• MCU: i.MX RT1062, 32-bit Cortex-M7 CPU Core @600MHz;

• Flash: 32MB, @133MHz, supports XIP;

• SDRAM: 32MB, @166MHz;

• Zigbee module: JN5189, 32-bit Cortex M4 @48MHz, ZigBee 3.0, Mesh ad hoc network.

Program Specifications:

• MCU: NXP i.MX RT1062 @600 MHz;

• Flash: 32MB Flash @133MHz;

• SDRAM: 32MB, @166MHz;

• Zigbee module: JN5189 module, 32-bit Cortex M4 @48MHz, ZigBee 3.0, receiving sensitivity: -90dBm;

• Ethernet: 10/100 RMII;

• Wi-Fi module: ESP-12S or ASW-022S;

• USB: USB-A & USB-Micro;

• CODEC: WM8960, 1 * Input, 2 * Output;

• Arduino interface;

• Board size: 90*94 mm.