Cloud Services

The IoT cloud services optimized for ultra-low power Nordic Semiconductor devices

nRF Cloud Services

nRF Cloud is a platform for cloud services optimized for Nordic wireless devices that offers protocol agnostic transport protocols, including CoAP, MQTT and REST. It offers out-of-the-box support for Nordic devices, whether customers have one device or thousands of devices. nRF Cloud is hosted by Nordic with 24/7 availability, maintenance and support. This is a huge advantage to have one provider for both hardware, software and cloud and one support portal.

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Key features in nRF Cloud include Location Services and Firmware Over the Air Updates. Device Management and Security Services will be available soon.

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Cloud Transports

Device-to-Cloud and Cloud-to-Cloud

There are two main ways of using nRF Cloud Services: Device-to-Cloud and Cloud-to-Cloud.

Device-to-Cloud: The device connects directly to nRF Cloud with a bi-directional CoAP or MQTT.

Cloud-to-Cloud: The device is provisioned to the customer's cloud and that cloud communicates to the nRF Cloud via a REST API. This is ideal for customers that already use their own cloud and provides greater flexibility and control over the device communication workflow.

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Why use location services?

Nordic Semiconductor is a pioneer in battery-operated, ultra-low power wireless SoCs. While we are most well known for our Bluetooth Low Energy offering, our best-in-class nRF9160 SiP shares the same ultra-low power DNA. By using this innovative SiP with nRF Cloud Location Services, customers can extend the lifetime of their cellular IoT based products.

Location services are the cornerstone to for devices being able to position themselves accurately, quickly and efficiently. By utilizing our single-cell (SCELL), multi-cell (MCELL), assisted GPS (A-GPS), predicted GPS (P-GPS) and/or Wi-Fi location features, customer's devices are guaranteed to last longer in the field, while sending accurate location data to the cloud.

Wi-Fi locationing

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What are location services?

nRF Cloud Location Services can be used to assist devices and customer applications that need fast and power-efficient location details. They are designed specifically for Nordic silicon to enable high performing and ultra-low power consuming product solution. It includes A-GPS, P-GPS, SCELL, MCELL and Wi-Fi location features.

  • A-GPS and P-GPS

     

    Regular GPS downloads assistance data via satellites (~50 bps). To speed things up, Nordic offers A-GPS and P-GPS which downloads the assistance data via LTE (~150 kbps). The data is provided in seconds instead of minutes via GPS.

     

    A-GPS over LTE enables a download of new assistance data (e.g. ephemeris, almanac) via LTE. A quicker time-to-first-fix (TTFF) compared with regular GPS increases power savings.

     

    P-GPS over LTE downloads a new asset plus up to two weeks of prediction data. The predictive assistance data can be valid up to 14 days. Some extra device processing helps provide valid assistance data available for periods without LTE coverage in remote areas. This useful feature also helps save on LTE costs vs cell-based location services.

  • SCELL and MCELL

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    SCELL provides a power efficient option to locate the device and consumes little power from the device. This is highly beneficial for indoor location, no-power scenarios or crude-location without requiring GPS.

     

    MCELL: The main difference vs single-cell is using multiple cell towers to triangulate the device location. Up to 17 cell towers can be used at once.

  • Wi-Fi

    The device scans nearby Wi-Fi networks without connecting to them. It then receives Wi-Fi network details from at least two access points and then connects and sends the details to nRF Cloud. nRF Cloud then calculates the device position with help of a Wi-Fi database, which has coordinates of different Wi-Fi networks. The device position is then sent from nRF Cloud to either the customer cloud or back to the device. Our nRF70 Series of Wi-Fi companion ICs fits this use case well in combination with a nRF91 Series device. The nRF7000 is a dedicated IC made exactly for this use case. It supports active and passive Wi-Fi scanning

Location Services Comparison

Location Feature A-GPS P-GPS SCELL MCELL Wi-Fi
Accuracy

High

 High

Low

 Medium Medium/High
Power Savings
 Good Better Highest Highest High

Description

Gets assistance data over cellular connection and uses the GPS modem to obtain a fix.

Similar to A-GPS, device downloads up to two weeks of predicted assistance data.

Gets coarse device location based off of nearest cell tower.

Provides a higher level of accuracy compared with SCELL by using multiple cell towers to obtain location.

The device scans at least two Wi-Fi access points, sends relevant network information to nRF Cloud, which then calculates a position estimate.
Benefit 1  

Provides a few hours of assistance data to the device.

  

While it still uses the GPS modem, the power savings comes from reducing the frequency to request new assistance data.

  

Saves power by not requiring the GPS modem.

  

Saves power by not requiring the GPS modem.

  

Saves power by not requiring the GPS modem.
Benefit 2  

Enables a faster TTFF for the GPS modem between a hot and warm start.

  

Enables a faster TTFF for the GPS modem between a hot and warm start.

      

Benefits and use cases

The benefits of location services combined with rich IoT device management capabilities are as follows:

  • Know where customer assets are and manage those remotely.
  • Designed for low-power consumption but scales across to rich nodes.
  • Scalability and easy integration with the back-end applications and use cases.

 

The nRF Cloud Location Services provide a comprehensive end-to-end solution:

  • Provides optimized assistance data for TTFF when using GPS. Applies for indoor and outdoor use.
  • Approximate location data based on SCELL, MCELL or Wi-Fi. This is a highly useful feature for further decisions if more accurate tracking is needed to start. This feature can easily be used in e.g. asset tracking and supply-chain tracking to get an accurate enough position when the asset is being transported. When the asset is almost at the destination, A-GPS and/or P-GPS can be activated to enable higher precision accuracy.
  • Seamless connectivity, management of devices and integration of location data. Smart appliances can utilize location data for diagnostics reporting to solve and inform operational, warranty or support problems and infrastructure.
  • Ultra-low power consumption and optimized data usage. This is ideal for applications such as smart wearables, which have a limited battery capacity. Devices can quickly and power-efficiently be tracked accurately anywhere in the world.