CODED PHY and BLE Audio in nRF52832

RE: CODED PHY and BLE Audio in nRF52832

PaKa — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 17:07:46 GMT

The Coded PHY is a HW feature so will never be supported on the nRF52832.

Note: usage of Audio in combination with Coded PHY is not a good idea as the throughput of Coded PHY is really to low to make this useful.

RE: CODED PHY and BLE Audio in nRF52832

ziv123 — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 13:20:41 GMT

hi Amanda

since this thread is from 5 years ago i retry .. maybe something has changed , softdevice optimizations perhaps, and nrf52832 can support coded phy now ?

RE: CODED PHY and BLE Audio in nRF52832

Amanda Hsieh — Tue, 20 Jul 2021 13:37:12 GMT

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.

RE: CODED PHY and BLE Audio in nRF52832

gez — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 10:34:41 GMT

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 !

RE: CODED PHY and BLE Audio in nRF52832

Amanda Hsieh — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 10:06:22 GMT

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.

RE: CODED PHY and BLE Audio in nRF52832

Eggz — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 07:20:17 GMT

Hi Gez, As far as I heard you need a dual core processor to run LE Audio. This is the reason why Nordic recommends the nRF5340. It means that you can run BLE on one processor and the LC3 codec on the other, for example. It could be that your application differs from mine, if so I will allow Nordic staff to comment. Just my 2 cents. Have a nice day you, too!