Bluetooth 5.1 maximum range

[Siddharth Venkatesh]

Hi 

I am planning to use the nRF52833 for the AoA direction finding application. On that I had two questions.

1. Currently I have two nRF52833 DKs for transmission and receiving. I am planning on designing my own PCB and I want to use only the nrf52833 bluetooth 5.1 chip in it. My question is can I directly program the nRF52833 SoC or do I need to use another micro to talk to the SoC. 

2. What is the maximum range I can expect for this kind of application. How far can these special direction finding packets (with CTE) travel? Can I use a transmission amplifier if it cannot go very far?

Thanks

[Dmitry]

Hi,

Siddharth Venkatesh said:

My question is can I directly program the nRF52833 SoC or do I need to use another micro to talk to the SoC.

Yes, you can program it with nRF52833 DK, you need four pins for programming.

Siddharth Venkatesh said:

What is the maximum range I can expect for this kind of application. How far can these special direction finding packets (with CTE) travel?

I think not much further than a packets without CTE :)  Direction finding works at 1M and 2M PHY (documentation doesn't say anything about coded PHY support), and in any case receiver has to decode a packet (at least an access address and packet header) to trigger direction finding engine - the distance will not be higher than with BLE data exchange. Also, an accuracy will drop noticeably when increasing distance because of lower signal-to-noise ratio.

Siddharth Venkatesh said:

Can I use a transmission amplifier if it cannot go very far

Of course, just bear in mind an allowed maximum TX power for your country.