case about nRF52840 BLE+RCP

[peter.min]

Hi,

1. Can nRF52840 run RCP+BLE at the same time?
2. Are there any examples you can provide to customers?
3. Are FLASH and RAM sufficient for resources?

Thank you for all your assistance.
Kind regards,
Peter.Min

[Maria Gilje]

Hi Peter,

1. Can nRF52840 run RCP+BLE at the same time?

Multiprotocol is generally supported for the Thread protocol and in the nRF Connect SDK this is achieved with the Multiprotocol Service Layer (MPSL). The MPSL implementation prioritises Bluetooth communication over other protocols, so the Thread communication can be interrupted and frames missed as a consequence.

2. Are there any examples you can provide to customers?

We don't have a reference sample which supports RCP and a full Bluetooth LE stack at this time. In nRF Connect SDK we have a HCI configuration for the Co-processor sample if you have the Bluetooth host on another MCU.

If your use case includes running the whole Bluetooth LE stack on the nRF52840 as well as the RCP, you need to implement this yourself. If you run into issues during implementation, please create a ticket here on DevZone so we can help you to resolve them.

3. Are FLASH and RAM sufficient for resources?

The memory requrements for OpenThread on nRF52840 are listed here. In the table showing memory values for multiprotocol, the available flash ranges from 461kB to 610kB and available RAM ranges from 141kB to 159kB. The variation is caused by which prebuilt library the application chooses: MTD, FTD, Master. The RCP library was released with nRF Connect SDK v2.7.0 and is not in the table, but the table values should reflect the actual values for the RCP library fairly closely.

Based on these numbers, the nRF52840 has enough ROM and RAM to support the Bluetooth LE stack and OpenThread stack in the same application.

Best regards,

Maria