nRF52 concurrent multiprotocol support

[Smart.Enrg]

Hi,

I am considering nRF52 (most likely nRF52833 or 811) for a new design - curious how mature is
the concurrent multiprotocol support in nRF52 - in particular for nRF52833/ 811?

Especially interested in two concurrent multiprotocol scenarios – if/ how well they are supported:

1. What are the limiting factors in deciding how many protocols or roles (in case of BLE) can
   be supported concurrently? Is there app note/ resource that can explain inner working of/
   design consideration for concurrent multiprotocol configurations/ usage?
   
   
2. BLE direction finding/A0A and BLE Mesh or Thread/ Zigbee mesh working concurrently –
   is this a sustainable configuration or stretching it too far?

        3. For development environment - both NCS and Zephyr support concurrent multiprotocol 
            based application development? What else I need?

Please advise.

[Kenneth]

Hi,

I am not aware of any specific documentation that describe how many protocol that can run in parallel. I do believe that for both Mesh and AoA they ideally want to use the radio entirely individually, if you want to run some sort of TDMA between them, it will affect response time. So trying to combine these two protocols in the same radio concurrently it may not work as well overall.

Our nRF Connect SDK (NCS) are using zephyr as the RTOS, so everything that is part of zephyr is included in nRF connect SDK.

Here are some useful links based on NCS:

https://developer.nordicsemi.com/nRF_Connect_SDK/doc/latest/nrfxlib/mpsl/README.html

https://developer.nordicsemi.com/nRF_Connect_SDK/doc/latest/nrfxlib/nrf_802154_sl/README.html

https://developer.nordicsemi.com/nRF_Connect_SDK/doc/latest/nrf/ug_zigbee_architectures.html#single-chip-multiprotocol-soc

https://developer.nordicsemi.com/nRF_Connect_SDK/doc/latest/nrf/ug_thread_architectures.html#single-chip-multiprotocol-soc

Here are some useful links based on nRF5 SDK:

https://infocenter.nordicsemi.com/index.jsp?topic=%2Fsdk_tz_v4.1.0%2Fthread_multi_examples.html

https://infocenter.nordicsemi.com/index.jsp?topic=%2Fsdk_tz_v4.1.0%2Fzigbee_multi_examples.html

https://infocenter.nordicsemi.com/index.jsp?topic=%2Fsdk_tz_v4.1.0%2Fble_154_multiprotocol.html

For new development (and moving forward) I would likely recommend NCS.

Best regards,
Kenneth