Feasibility/Stability of BLE Mesh/AoA on nRF5340

[Old_Mike]

Purpose: to develop a central device using nRF5340 and to enable both BLE Mesh and AoA features.

Questions:

1. nRF5 SDK supports nRF51 and nRF52 series but not for nRF5340 and thus I can only use nRF Connect SDK, right?

2. Is the BLE mesh feature of nRF Connect SDK stable enough or is it still in the experimental stage?

https://developer.nordicsemi.com/nRF_Connect_SDK/doc/latest/nrf/ug_bt_mesh.html

https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/f/nordic-q-a/61138/is-there-a-working-sample-of-ble-mesh-on-the-nrf5340

3. To utilize the AoA feature, should I provide an algorithm to derive the object distance from the raw IQ data or is there existed library in the SDK do the calculation for me?

https://devzone.nordicsemi.com/f/nordic-q-a/76677/aod-aoa

https://developer.nordicsemi.com/nRF_Connect_SDK/doc/latest/nrf/samples/bluetooth/direction_finding_connectionless_tx/README.html

https://developer.nordicsemi.com/nRF_Connect_SDK/doc/latest/nrf/samples/bluetooth/direction_finding_connectionless_rx/README.html

[AHaug]

Hi,

Purpose: to develop a central device using nRF5340 and to enable both BLE Mesh and AoA features.

Just a heads up, if you wish to use AoA in the same application you're also using mesh, you will have to enable both the BLE stack in addition to the mesh stack, as AoA is only supported with BLE.

1. nRF5 SDK supports nRF51 and nRF52 series but not for nRF5340 and thus I can only use nRF Connect SDK, right?

That is correct, the nRF5340 is not supported in nRF5 SDK and nRF Connect SDK is the SDK intended for the nRF5340

2. Is the BLE mesh feature of nRF Connect SDK stable enough or is it still in the experimental stage?

Bluetooth mesh in nRF Connect SDK has been supported for production since NCS v1.7.0, per Bluetooth Mesh specification v1.0.1

3. To utilize the AoA feature, should I provide an algorithm to derive the object distance from the raw IQ data or is there existed library in the SDK do the calculation for me?

The AoA direction finding solution we provide will only output the raw IQ data by default, as we don't provide the AoA algorithm necessary to make use of the data collected by the antenna array. There is no point in looking at the raw data as it needs to be converted into vector form to review it properly. You can check out this page for information on the various formulas used to translate IQ data between polar and rectangular form.

Also note that this specific solution for AoA is only our solution to this problem. There are multiple other ways to do this, but this is the only solution we support.

Let me know if this answers your questions!

Kind regards,
Andreas