Ble chip comparison...!

RE: Ble chip comparison...!

Hung Bui — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 09:24:44 GMT

Hi Iqbalpalemad,

As Roger suggested, the issue could be with the Ble Nano Board's antenna and its RF circuit have not been tuned and optimized. In addition the board is pretty small compare to the PICTAIL+RN4020, the size of the ground plane play a pretty important role of RF performance.

If you want to evaluate the range, we would suggest you to test with our nRF5 DK instead.

RE: Ble chip comparison...!

awneil — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 09:06:41 GMT

i have set Tx power 4 for both boards

So what does '4' mean?

Are you sure that '4' actually represents the same power for both chips?

RE: Ble chip comparison...!

Roger Clark — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 06:18:12 GMT

OK. I think that explains your results.

RE: Ble chip comparison...!

iqbalpalemad — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 05:13:53 GMT

I think the antennas are diffrent

RE: Ble chip comparison...!

Roger Clark — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 05:10:48 GMT

You'd need to wait for official confirmation by Nordic that their devices transmit with the same power as Microchip, but I thought it was part of the Bluetooth spec for all manufacturers.

Hence the only difference could be antenna matching and antenna efficiency

RBL are a small company and I think they outsource their antenna design to a Chinese company called RFSister.

Microchip probably have their own experienced in-house designers, and possibly better test facilities and would also have more time and money to spend testing multiple different variations of antenna design to get the optimum.

You should probably buy an official Nordic made product like their Beacon and compare that with the Microchip board.

PS. Have you looked in detail at what the antenna's on these to boards look like ?

RE: Ble chip comparison...!

iqbalpalemad — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 04:48:21 GMT

i have tested the RBL board in all possible orientations but there is no considerable change in either RSSI or range of communication

RE: Ble chip comparison...!

Roger Clark — Thu, 10 Nov 2016 22:40:53 GMT

The difference in performance is most likely to be the antenna design is more efficient on the Microchip board.

You will also find that the range will depend on the orientation of the BLE board to the receiver as the antenna radiation pattern is not evenly spherical.

Its also possible that the Microchip board transmits further in one direction than it does in others, and possibly the RBL board may have a more even radiation pattern.

But I suspect that the Microchip board probably has better antenna matching to the BLE device and hence is just a more effective antenna setup