"Tile Pro" Tracker - Impressive Range

RE: "Tile Pro" Tracker - Impressive Range

ProfHindsight — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 21:11:10 GMT

[quote userid="26345" url="~/f/nordic-q-a/29290/tile-pro-tracker---impressive-range/116498"]any idea what manufacturer the "X8 OZ4D" part comes from?[/quote]

RFFM6205 - Qorvo part

RE: "Tile Pro" Tracker - Impressive Range

ovrebekk — Mon, 15 Jan 2018 14:00:08 GMT

Thanks for the information on the notwired solution. Good to hear that you found something that worked satisfactorily :)

Best regards

RE: "Tile Pro" Tracker - Impressive Range

jumpingfool — Mon, 15 Jan 2018 10:26:26 GMT

Thanks to Torbjorn and endnode for their help with my question.

Just in case anyone else is looking to try out the skyworks power amplifier recommended by Torbjorn I can highly recommend this dev kit from notwired:

www.notwired.co/.../

Not only do they provide a reference design containing the NRF52832 and the Skyworks SKY66112-11 on a tiny board, they also provide example code showing how to interface the two using the Nordic SDK, which can then easily be translated to other applications. Using this I was up an running with my own application in just a couple of hours.

The radio module also has a handy set of 1.27mm headers (male and female) down each side that make it easy to incorporate the module into other designs - it's like a miniature PCA10040 dev board.

The range from the module with the PA set to high power is very impressive, adding around another 10 meters onto the (already impressive) range of Tile's TC35678 based design.

Fantastic!

RE: "Tile Pro" Tracker - Impressive Range

endnode — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 21:50:16 GMT

This is good description of PA/LNA built-in function in S132 and here is documentation of API call. There seems to be no usage of this structure in nRF5 SDK examples but there were people before you asking on this forum so using search with terms like "PA/LNA" should give you some rewards.

RE: "Tile Pro" Tracker - Impressive Range

jumpingfool — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 21:12:45 GMT

Hi Torbjorn,

Thanks again for your help. After a bit more research I have found this module from notWired which pairs the nRF52832 with the SKY66112 and a chip antenna:

www.notwired.co/.../

I've ordered a couple to experiment with before we move to our own PCB design.

From reading the datasheet I can see that the PA must be toggled between TX and RX mode using GPIO in sync with the radio activity from the the Nordic SoC. Are there any examples/tutorials available that I could use to understand what modifications will be required to the SDK examples to enable them to drive the PA?

RE: "Tile Pro" Tracker - Impressive Range

ovrebekk — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 15:28:59 GMT

It's not unreasonable that the smaller Tile antenna would be more omni-directional. A straight monopole antenna will have a hole in the direction it is pointing, while a meandering antenna will have a more unpredictable (and usually more omni-directional) radiation pattern because of the many bends in the antenna.

I have never heard about the X8 part. Googling this part number didn't yield much either, so it's hard to say what it could be. Skyworks is the most common provider of PA solution in Nordic designs, but it doesn't look like one of those.

If you want to design your own PCB we are happy to look over your layout, and we can also assist in tuning the antenna if you don't have the lab equipment to do so yourself.

Best regards
Torbjørn

RE: "Tile Pro" Tracker - Impressive Range

endnode — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 13:21:18 GMT

Also everything matters including PCB shape (= this might be more important for DK then "best" tuning), casing etc. (so if you think this thru there is no real "line of sight" test unless you send the thing into space and measure from the distance, there are always some holders or other objects which are close to the beacon and can absorb or reflect 2.4GHz waves... Still you can get close to that scenario and I do believe that Ruuvi tag has very good antenna design which can be superior to nRF5x DK boards.

RE: "Tile Pro" Tracker - Impressive Range

endnode — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 13:18:50 GMT

Yes, I have couple of Ruuvi tags and yes, I've picked the tag from that tower so I can say that nRF52832 with Tx Power set to +4dBm have such performance. Indeed once you have any obstacles (it's enough to walk much closer to the tower but among the trees in the wood on that hill) the story is very different, you will see much lower RSSI or complete drop of packets.

And yes, the antenna design is what can make magic. It's big difference if you have experienced RF engineer who is able to run simulation (in expensive software) before finalizing the PCB and testing then prototypes and adjusting tuning based on actual PCBs received from the factory or if you just get some stock rectangle and put some textbook antenna to it. I'm sure Nordic have this kind of expertise but it's question if it was used or even desired in case of their dev kits.

RE: "Tile Pro" Tracker - Impressive Range

jumpingfool — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 12:34:02 GMT

Thanks for the heads up - the video is certainly impressive. Just ordered a few of these to try out.

Do you have one of these boards? How do you find performance in a real world setting?

I guess my question would be, if this line of sight range is possible at +4db using the nRF52832 why does the PCA10040 only seem give a fraction of that (tested with iPhone 8)? Presumably this can only be down to a difference in the antenna? Have the two boards been tuned differently and if so how?

RE: "Tile Pro" Tracker - Impressive Range

endnode — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 08:01:23 GMT

Btw. there are some great nRF52 based beacons which are having line of sight >1000m (pure beacon ADV packets @+4dBm Tx Power visible on normal smart phone with <-100dBm sensitivity)

RE: "Tile Pro" Tracker - Impressive Range

jumpingfool — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 00:40:44 GMT

Hi Torbjorn - really appreciate your help.

I managed to get hold of a PCA10056 today and do some experimenting. I built the proximity demo with the TX power set to 8db, flashed the board and then did some comparisons against the Tile board.

With the antennas on both boards optimally positioned it is a very close race, with the Tile giving roughly another 10-15 feet of additional range over the PCA10056. My guess is the RF amp on the Tile board is probably boosting the signal to 10db which is giving it a slight edge. Impressive they've managed to get the power budget down so low if that's the case though - any idea what manufacturer the "X8 OZ4D" part comes from?

However, it is a different story when the boards are rotated and positioned such that the antenna is at 90 degrees to the receiver. Here the PCA10056 drops out at about half the distance of the previous test while the Tile board shows almost no impact.

Given the application of the Tile board as a key finder where orientation to the receiver is an unknown clearly the funky looking antenna is optimised for this use case. Do Nordic offer a keyfinder reference design with a similarly optimised antenna, or if not could we engage you to assist with optimising our design?

RE: "Tile Pro" Tracker - Impressive Range

ovrebekk — Tue, 09 Jan 2018 12:51:51 GMT

Was the output power of the nRF52832 +4dBm when you compared it, or was it lower?

I strongly doubt the antenna of the Tile module is better than the one on the DK, due to it's smaller size. If they did a good job tuning it (which I assume they did, judging by the range) it should be comparable.

If the range is double this is most likely caused by higher output power, and double the range equals roughly 6dB higher output power.

To summarize, if the Tile was double the range of the nRF52DK at +4dBm, then I doubt the nRF52840 at +8dBm will be able to beat it, but it should get you close.

As a final note, the TC35678 appears to be a Toshiba part. I wasn't aware they were in the BLE space, but these days everyone is.

Best regards
Torbjørn Øvrebekk