How many nodes can ANT support when auto shared channel is used?

[Alex Cheng]

We have an use case that we may need to support up to ,say 500 sensor nodes and it may be added or removed dynamically. And we should collect all sensor data within 3 seconds. I just wonder if ANT can support so many nodes with the limit of response time. According to ANT spec, it's maximum message rate is 200 HZ. Does it implies that the maximum nodes we can support is 200 or we still can handle 500 nodes by polling different nodes sequentially (1~200 in the first sec, 201~400 in the second sec and 401~500 in the third sec )? What message period should be set ? 200HZ ?

[Kenneth]

I doubt you will be able to ensure both the high amount of nodes and response time with only one receiver. In theory your suggestion will work, but once you have some packet loss, e.g. due to interference, then you are lost. I think you need more than one receiver for this to work reliable. You might get better resolution building your application using our ESB library instead of ANT, but then you will need to spend more time developing, as that ESB library only provide the low level radio functionality (rx and tx with retransmission), and no timing, pairing or co-existence handling.

[Alex Cheng]

Thanks for your feedback. Could you please detail the advantage of using ESB lib ?