Introducing RW61X: A Wi Fi 6 Tri Radio in a Secure i.MX RT MCU

Today's smart homes and modern buildings have 100 or more connected devices using different wireless standards. NXP's RW61x provides a strong solution to this demand with easy and efficient wireless connectivity, making it a highly integrated and secure tri-radio wireless MCU.

RW61x adds to NXP's portfolio of wireless MCU's by enabling wireless connectivity for multiple implementations of the Matter standard such as Matter over Thread, Matter over Wi-Fi and Matter over Ethernet with advanced coexistence. In addition to this, RW61x provides architectural flexibility for standalone or network co-processor (NCP) hosted designs where simplicity and device size are critical.

Target applications include:

• Industrial applications such as building security, lighting and point-of-sale (POS) terminals
• Blood pressure monitor, fitness equipment, weighing scale and glucometer
• Home security and surveillance, in-home energy display, major home appliances, small and medium appliances
• Multi-radio hub/smart device gateway for Internet connectivity
• Smart power socket and light switch
• Gaming accessories

The RW61x MCU subsystem includes a 260 MHz Arm® Cortex®-M33 core with Trustzone™-M, 1.2 MB on-chip SRAM, external pSRAM support via FlexSPI and a high-bandwidth Quad SPI interface with an on-the-fly decryption engine for securely accessing off-chip XIP flash.

The RW61x includes a full-featured dual-band Wi-Fi 6 radio with support for 20 MHz channel bandwidth. Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) offers higher throughput, more efficient networking, lower latency and improved range over previous generations of Wi-Fi standard. The Bluetooth LE radio supports 2 Mbit/s high-speed data rate, long range and extended advertising. The on-chip 802.15.4 radio for RW612 supports the latest Thread and Zigbee mesh networking protocol. In addition, the RW612 supports Matter over Wi-Fi, Matter over Thread, and Matter over Ethernet offering a common, interoperable application layer across ecosystems and products.

The advanced design of the RW61x delivers tight integration and highly secure operation in a space- and cost-efficient wireless MCU requiring only a single 3.3 V power supply.

Industrial IoT Enablement

Industrial enablement remains at the top of all the applications addressed by NXP and RW61X serves this purpose by easily becoming a part of this ecosystem under building security, lighting and point-of-sale (POS) terminals.

The RW61X also supports NXP's EdgeLock 2GO services for simplified remote provisioning, management of device credentials, manufacturing and through the device life-cycle management mechanism, which addresses many of the customer concerns that are critical for credentials and not to be compromised once deployed. RW61X helps in developing simplified designs and reduces the complexity of supporting the new Matter standard.

Strong Foundation for Smart and Secure Homes

As a Tri-Radio solution with an integrated MCU, RW61X is just the perfect choice for all sorts of smart home applications and solutions including blood pressure monitor, fitness equipment, glucometer, home security and surveillance, in-home energy display, major home appliances, multiradio hub/smart gateway for Internet connectivity, small and medium appliances, smart power sockets and light switches, weighing scales and more. RW61X can extensively help the smart device manufacturers working on such products to bring next-generation Matter products to the market.

Single Chip Solution for Open Thread Border Router

• Thread Border Router connects the Wi-Fi and Thread networks, can be integrated in Matter application product devices
• Thread allows multiple Border Routers in a network to improve range and reliability

EdgeLock ^® Security Subsystem

An important capability in the RW61x series is the EdgeLock Secure Subsystem. Security features have been engineered into the RW61x from the beginning to address the growing needs for protection against cybersecurity attacks.

EdgeLock® security technology is incorporated, offering secure boot, secure debug, secure firmware updates and secure life cycle management as well as hardware cryptography and physically unclonable function (PUF) for secure key management.

An important benefit of the EdgeLock Secure Subsystem is that customers can take advantage of NXP's EdgeLock 2GO service platform for provisioning and managing IoT devices. The Matter wireless IoT protocol is built on a strong, proven security framework. Before a device can be onboarded to a Matter network, it must validate its identity and prove that it has passed Matter certification through an embedded Device Attestation Certificate (DAC).

As a Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA)-approved product attestation authority (PAA), NXP provides product manufacturers with a one-stop-shop for Matter certification and security certificates, accelerating Matter product development and deployment.

MCUXpresso Development Experience

At the heart of the RW61x experience is the MCUXpresso suite of software and tools. The MCUXpresso suite offers core software development kits (SDKs) and Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) and configuration tooling.

The SDK is flexible and can be used with a range of IDEs including:

• MCUXpresso for Visual Studio Code (VS Code): VS Code with extension from NXP to enable fast, flexible development
• MCUXpresso IDE: Customized, Eclipse-based, IDE for NXP MCUs, optimized for ease of use
• IAR Embedded Workbench: Safety certified, highly optimizing compiler and development environment for C/C++

The RW61x also comes with FreeRTOS and Zephyr OS support.

Hardware Development with FRDM EVKs

Alongside the release of RW61x is low-cost FRDM development board for the RW612.

RW61x in 2024

Please visit RW61x on NXP.com to get more information and the latest updates so you can start planning your next connectivity design.

Learn about RW61x on NXP's Community.