nRF52840 Rev2 vs RevC (long range difference?)

[qianjunwang]

Hi,

I am testing the Bluetooth remote discovery of the nRF52840 in LE Coded mode with the transmission power set to 8 dBm.

The farthest distance currently achievable is 200 meters, but the RSSI is already at -96 or even lower.

According to the following website,  Testing Long Range (Coded PHY) with Nordic solution (It Simply Works)  , the author set the transmit power to 0 dBm but was able to reach 1300 meters. The author mentioned that their development board is the nRF52840 Rev C. My chip version is nRF52840_xxAA_REV2, which is different from Rev C, and I do not know how much the performance difference between the two is in long-range measurements.

Also, what factors may affect my distance measurement besides the interference of the external environment? How much influence does the angle and height of the development board have?

Thank you.

[Kenneth]

Hi,

Antennas are not omni-directional, which means they will radiate better in certain directions than others, ideally at these kind of distances you might try to make the antenna more directional in some way. The difference in radiation pattern can be more than 10dB that in certain directions, so the orientation and nearby objects (e.g. human body) can have a hugh influence on the antenna. So I guess you can try to orient the boards (both central and peripheral) at a long distance to see how that affect the RSSI to indirectly find which orientation that works the best yes. I do not expect difference between rev B and rev C.

Kenneth