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

[Simonr]

Hi 

Dmitry is absolutely correct in his statements here. I just want to add one thing regarding Coded PHY and direction-finding: In the Bluetooth Core Specification Version 5.1 | Vol 1, Part A page 281 the following is stated:

"An LE device can make its direction available for a peer device by transmitting
direction-finding enabled packets. Using direction information from several
transmitters and profile-level information giving their locations, an LE radio can
calculate its own position.

This feature is supported over the LE Uncoded PHYs, but not over the LE
Coded PHY."

This means that Coded PHY and CTE are mutually exclusive, so you won't be able to use direction-finding in long-range applications.

Best regards,

Simon

[Siddharth Venkatesh]

Hi

So what would you say is the maximum range. Can direction finding at least work within 100m. 

Thanks

[Dmitry]

It's hard to say.. link distance may vary from 10-20m in a noisy office to more than 300m outdoors. And you will get some data over the whole range, but quality of these data will get worse to the edges - an accuracy will depend on the length of CTE and filtering/averaging technics in your algorithm.

100m is quite achievable with this method of location.