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nRF51 beacon high frequency scanning and advertising?

Hello, beginner here. :)

I just bought an nRF51 DK, but have not received it yet. I decided to test it because my older BLE module (HM-11) only allowed me to scan beacons once every 3 seconds.

My intention: using nRF51822 chips I want to make several beacons and 1 beacon scanner. I want this scanner to be able to get these beacons' info (major,minor...) and RSSI at somewhat high frequency, for example 10Hz or higher.

My question: is this feasible using nRF51822?

I have read on other questions that advertising beacon interval can be reduced up to 100ms (10Hz), but on other question they said 20ms (50Hz), so which one is the max frequency for beacon advertising? Also I am worried about the scanner being able to scan all these beacons (4-5 units) at a high frequency (ideal case same or higher frequency than the advertising, so I don't lose advertising packets). What is the estimated maximum frequency for a scanner like this?

Extra info: I believe that if beacons advertise at the same time, my scanner will only be able to receive one of them (or maybe none due to interference), so I will arrange them somehow to start at different times or with sligthy different advertising intervals.

Extra request: I would like to learn more about how these chips scan each frequency/channel, or if every frequency/channel is scanned at the same time, how are channels organized and selected, etc. Any link, doc or place I could learn this?

Thank you very much for your time, any hint is appreciated. :)

  • Hi Luis,

    I meant why do you want to have lower than 100ms advertising interval ? It's based on my assumption that you want higher frequency than 10Hz.

    Regarding the test, no, we haven't done any test like that. But the time frame needed to transmit 3 advertising packet is around 2ms. The scanner can be scanning all the time (on 3 channels, one by one in turn). I guess you can use Mathlab or other tools to do the simulation and calculate the transmit success rate base on your desired advertising interval.

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