An nRF52840 Bluetooth®
/IEEE
802.15.4 System on Chip (SoC) is included on the nRF9160 DK.
This device has two functions:
nRF9160 DK control
Bluetooth/IEEE 802.15.4 network processor
Figure 1. nRF52840 SoC on the nRF9160 DK
nRF9160 DK board control
The nRF52840 SoC controls analog switches on the nRF9160 DK, enabling routing of some of the nRF9160 GPIO pins to onboard functionality, for example LEDs, or the regular GPIO interfaces.
Bluetooth/IEEE 802.15.4 network processor
A second function of the onboard nRF52840 SoC is to act as a Bluetooth or IEEE 802.15.4 network processor. This makes it possible to develop products that utilize both LTE and other RF protocols supported by Nordic on the nRF9160 DK.