Inquiry on Concurrent Use of THREAD and BLE with Specific Power Settings

[Ankit]

Dear Nordic Support Team,

I am working with the nRF52840 in a multi-protocol setup and would like to clarify the feasibility of the following configuration:

Running Thread and BLE concurrently.

• Setting the Thread TX power to +20 dBm.
• Setting the BLE TX power to +8 dBm.

Could you confirm whether this configuration is supported? Additionally, are there any limitations, hardware constraints, or potential interference concerns that I should be aware of?

I had read through the ticket  Separate transmit power setting for BLE and Thread when using MPSL  but didn't find it helpful in configuring above specified configuration.

Looking forward to your guidance.

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../separate-transmit-power-setting-for-ble-and-thread-when-using-mpsl

[Marte Myrvold]

Hi,

It should be possible to set the TX power to different values for Thread and BLE in a multiprotocol application.

The maximum TX power for Thread on the nRF52840 is +8 dBm. If you want +20 dBm, you will need to use a FEM, such as the nRF21540.

The multiprotocol part is handled by the MPSL library, and allocates time slots for the radio protocols. Because of this, interference should not be a problem, as only one radio is transmitting at a time. One thing to be aware of is that BLE activity takes priority over Thread, which means that Thread logic may be interrupted by BLE. This also means that when BLE is performing time-consuming tasks, such as scanning or maintaining a large number of connections, it can affect the Thread performance. Because of this, you should set scanning and connection parameters accordingly.
You can read more about limitations and considerations in Multiprotocol support.

Best regards,
Marte