nWP034 - nRF9160 Hardware Verification Guidelines

This document provides guidelines for the hardware verification testing of nRF9160. It is intended for Nordic Semiconductor’s customers, especially system integrators and hardware engineers.

nRF9160 is an LTE made simple cellular IoT System in Package (SiP) that is pre-certified for building end products. nRF9160 consists of an Arm® Cortex®- M33 microcontroller and 3GPP LTE release 13 compliant embedded LTE-M and Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) LTE modem.

The microcontroller has a built-in 1 MB flash memory, Arm TrustZone® technology, and 32 general purpose I/O pins. The LTE modem has a transceiver with global cellular band coverage, ultra-low current consumption, and single 50 Ω antenna interface. In addition, the modem supports a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver from a second 50 Ω antenna interface.

External to the nRF9160 SiP are supply source, Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) solution, antenna with matching circuitry, and any peripherals or sensors.

The following diagram shows an overview of the nRF9160 SiP.

nRF91 SoC block diagram

For more information on the features and specifications of nRF9160, see nRF9160 Product Specification.

The features described in this document are supported by modem firmware v1.1.0 and later.