CODED PHY and BLE Audio in nRF52832

[gez]

Hi,

I am wondering why can't CODED PHY and BLE Audio be modded into the nRF52832. Are there any hardware requirements for both to be supported ? If so, is there any info source that specifies what must be done to achieve CODED PHY and BLE Audio support ?

Have a nice day !

[Amanda Hsieh]

Hi, 

There is no support for BT 5 Long Range (Coded PHY) and BLE Audio on nRF52832! The reason is that the radio is required to support a Forward Error Correction encoding on the Tx and decoding on the Rx, and there is no audio codec in HW.

nRF5340 can support Long Range and BLE Audio, and you might be interested in this blog post on Bluetooth LE Audio. The nRF5340 will be the recommended SoC for LE Audio support, as the dual-core solution will allow it to run both the radio and the required LC3 codec (which will require a dedicated processor).

-Amanda H.

[gez]

So the FEC coder/decoder is not a software implementation but a hardware one (guessing due to latency) for CODED PHY ? It's probably the same with the nRF5340 having two cores (one for the RF side, the other for LC3 codec).

Are hardware implementations of these systems (FEC coder/decoder and LC3 codec) documented in the BLE spec or is it just saying what they should do and the engineer figures out the hardware that will conform to the requirements. As far as I can tell, the spec just says that system X must include functionality Y with optional stuff Z. How does one implements such systems is a mystery to me.

PS: Thank you for the answers all of you have given me and do not be afraid to post heavy engineering material. It's bugging me that I haven't grasped this marvelous technological sandwich yet.

Have a nice day !

[Amanda Hsieh]

Hi,

Not sure other competitors how to implement the BLE spec. In the nRF devices such as nRF52840/5340 supports Long Range, it requires both hardware and software to support the features.

-Amanda H.