Understanding Receiver Sensitivity Relationship to Antenna

[Valxor]

Hello, I am new to BLE development and RF design. I've been doing as much reading as I can about RF design rules for PCB's, antenna performance, etc. Yet I am still uncertain about one specific topic; that being receiver sensitivity.

Take for example an NRF52832:

It is obvious that different antenna designs attached to an NRF52832 SoC, will result in differing radiation patterns/bandwidth for transmission, yet I don't understand why the receiver sensitivity will remain constant, regardless of antenna choice. For example, any 3rd party module that I search that hosts an NRF52832 will claim a receiver sensitivity of -96dBm, despite noticeably different antennas, and regardless of PCB size. 

Forgive my ignorance on the subject, but is receiver sensitivity completely independent of the antenna, and a relatively fixed value inherent to the chip itself?

In that case the receiver's (central) antenna wouldn't really be relevant to range, only the transmitters (peripheral) antenna and the receiver's sensitivity?

[Andreas]

Hi,

 

The RX sensitivity spec is conducted sensitivity, i.e. the signal level on the input of the matching network that yields the specified BER. A radiated sensitivity (TRS or TIS) would refer to the signal strength recevied by the antenna, and take the antenna gain into the mix. In a practical setup the antenna does have an impact on the range, both for transmitter and receiver.

Whatever 3rd party vendors do I do not know, but the conducted sensitivity remains the same provided they have done the layout properly. It sounds as they are also providing the conducted sensitivity.

 

Best regards,

Andreas

[Valxor]

Ok thanks, I think I understand now. The chip itself is claiming that the final received power level required for reliable communication is -96dBm (conducted sensitivity), but what the actual received strength ends up being is dependent on the antennas performance. I don't know why I confused the two, but thanks for clearing that up.