Bluetooth 5.1 chip and devBoard choose

[Ivan]

Hello everyone.

I'm looking for BT5.1 most supported at current moment chip - to have devboard and SDK with ability of direction finding.
Which one you can recommend?

As I can see, currently there are almost 3 of them :

nrf52811 based
here is devboard I find with this chip:

https://eu.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Rigado/BMD-360-EVAL?qs=sGAEpiMZZMsG1k5vdNM%2Fc6psRX3yiXsCQ0mu1ydbnPA%3D

nrf52833
https://eu.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Nordic-Semiconductor/nRF52833-DK?qs=sGAEpiMZZMvhBzIVwy6%252BIQL0fppp%252BkUjcUuULMqMGnlk%252Bq5Kk8Rutg%3D%3D

nrf5340
https://www.nordicsemi.com/Software-and-tools/Development-Kits/nRF5340-PDK

Which one is better to start with, or maybe there are some other variants?
Waiting for your suggestions.

Kind regards.
Ivan.

[Marjeris Romero]

Hi,

Yes, the nRF52833, nRF52811 and the newly released nRF5340, are the SoCs in our portfolio with a radio that supports the direction finding capabilities of Bluetooth 5.1. Unfortunately we do not yet have any software example for direction finding in our SDKs.

The choice of DK would be according to which SoC meets the requirement and demands of your application. But keep in mind that both our nRF52833 DK and nRF5340 DK have only a single antenna, hence can only be used as a tag as they are.

We are working on a add-on board with an antenna array and RF switches for our development kits that have a Bluetooth 5.1 SoC as well as the software algorithm to estimate the angle from the IQ measurements. This should be available sometime during the first half of this year, but please contact your local Nordic Regional Sales Manager for more information on our Direction Finding roadmap. 

Best regards,

Marjeris