nRF52 WLCSP CIAA RF performance

[Charlie Skilbeck]

At infocenter.nordicsemi.com/.../anomaly_832_91.html it says that for the IC Rev. Engineering C, build codes CIAA-BA0:

Average Sensitivity over all channels degraded in LDO mode by 2 dB

Average Sensitivity over all channels degraded in DCDC mode by 4 dB

I can't find any other revision of the device for sale anywhere, so may I ask what the practical implications are of this? I was planning to use the WLCSP variant of the nRF52 in DCDC mode, can someone tell me how the RF receive performance will be degraded in real terms?

Also, will a revised variant be released at any point with a fix for this?

[ovrebekk]

Hi Charlie

The practical implications when you lose sensitivity is reduced RF range. With a loss of 2dB you should see the range reduced by about 20%. With a 4dB loss you are looking at a 37% loss in range.

Whether or not this is a problem depends on the use case, and how much range you need.

We don't have any current plans to improve the sensitivity on the nRF52832 CSP, no. We obviously want our CSP parts to be as close to the QFN as possible in terms of performance, but from a design perspective these parts are more challenging.

Best regards
Torbjørn