NRF52 indoor range

[Yegor]

For the first, impressed by your intoducing NRF52 chip.

Question: what`s NRF52 indoor range using onboard antenna and maximum output power (+4dBm)? Thanks.

[Øyvind Karlsen]

While it's hard to give exact numbers on range as Dave said we can calculate how much improvement you would see from the nRF51. With an improved link budget of 5dB we get an increased range of about 70% in those cases where we can ignore losses.

What makes the calculation a lot harder is that on-the-air loss is a function where one of the main contributors are range. Additionally you have the loss through solid or semi-solid objects which can be very significant, think concrete vs. lead chamber. This is why you are very likely to get a cryptic answer.

[Dave_couling]

You mention a 5dB improved link budget. However Tx (max) is still +4dB and the Rx (sensitivity): -96dB (from -93dB on nRF51). Isn't this only a 3dB improvement not 5dB

[Øyvind Karlsen]

I understand your confusion, the datasheet states that the nRF51 has a receiver sensitivity of -91 dBm for a dirty transmitter and -93 dBm for an ideal transmitter in 1Msps BLE mode.

For the nRF52 these numbers are -96dBm both for the ideal and the dirty transmitter.

I chose to base my calculations on the dirty transmitter as that is what you are likely to see in a use case scenario.

In addition to the improved sensitivity the internal balun and new radio gets us more overhead on reaching +4dBm than we had before, so you will likely see a higher TX as well.

However you are right, for an ideal transmitter the improvement would be ~3dB.