Which nRF52 (832 or 840) is recommended that supports RF coexistence with the Espressif ESP8266 Wi-Fi?

[Denna]

Hi Dev Zone,

We have an existing design that includes the Espressif ESP8266 Wi-Fi MCU and we would like to add an nRF52 to the design.  Our preference would be to add the nRF52832 since we already have firmware for that part for this application.

Which nRF52 (832 or 840) is recommended that supports RF coexistence with the Espressif ESP8266 Wi-Fi?

If both nRF52 parts support the RF coexistence protocol with the Espressif ESP8266 Wi-Fi MCU, then what was the first version of the SoftDevice and nRF5 SDK that added support for the RF coexistence protocol that is compatible with the Espressif ESP8266 Wi-Fi?

I tried searching through the infocenter documentation, but my findings were inconclusive.

Thanks,

Starbuck

[Einar Thorsrud]

Hi,

The WiFi coexistence support in the nRF Connect SDK is quite good (see Bluetooth External Radio Coexistence), but for the SoftDevices the support is lacking. There is no difference between the nRF52832 and nRF52840 in this regard.

Note that even without specific coexistence features, coexistence typically works quite well as Bluetooth is frequency hopping, and different packets are sent on different channels. So if some channels are blocked for much of the time, other packets will typically make it through on other channels. (After all, Bluetooth LE was designed to coexist with WiFi in the same area).