Enhanced Shockburst: What is ESB_PROTOCOL_ESB for and which data throughput can I expect?

[Stefan Schmidt]

Dear Nordic Supportteam,

 starting from the ESB sample I have developed a transmitter and a receiver application, both running on a separate nRF54L15DK. My goal is to find out if it is possible to stream audio over this protocol.

I am using ESB_PROTOCOL_ESB_DPL as protocol and ESB_BITRATE_4MBPS as bitrate without acknowledge. I am able to transmit 34 kHz stereo audio samples with 16 bit (1088000 Bit/s).

Now my questions:
1) What is ESB_PROTOCOL_ESB, /**< Fixed payload length. */? The documentation does not give any hint and I cannot find any references in the esb source code. Nevertheless, when I enable it I get TX_ERRORS

2) What would you expect as a maximum net bitrate with Enhanced Shockburst? I am transmitting blocks of 126 Bytes every 1.85 ms. It would be great to get your idea on what to expect and how to improve that.

Best regards

Stefan

[Hung Bui]

Hi Stefan, 

To get the best description of the legacy ESB protocol, I would suggest to take a look at the nRF24LE1 datasheet. You can find ESB protocol described at section 3.4: https://docs.nordicsemi.com/bundle/nRF24LE1_PS_v1.6/resource/nRF24LE1_PS_v1.6.pdf

ESB_PROTOCOL_ESB is the non dynamic payload length option which doesn't use the length field in the packet control field byte. The transmitter and the receive need to agree on the packet size in advance (fixed). nRF24 only support up to 32 byes but nRF5x can support up to 252 bytes. 

https://docs.nordicsemi.com/bundle/ncs-latest/page/nrf/protocols/esb/index.html

I don't have the maximum throughput for ESB, but there is some discussion here
How to achieve NRF52840 ESB Maximum data rate

The customer reported 3324kbps when using 4Mbps bit rate. 

[Stefan Schmidt]

Hi Hung Bui,

 thanks a lot for the fast response! I will have a look at the articles!

Have a nice weekend

Stefan