Direction finding beacon and 802.15.4 in the nRF5340

Hello PaKa and Simon,

Does version 2.0.0 of the SDK support running an 802.15.4 transmitter alongside the BLE connectionless direction finding beacon?

If it does, are there sample projects that I can use to try it out?

Thanks again,

Mike Norton

This should be supported in the nRF Connect SDK 2.0.0. Try the connectionless beacon example. Note that you have to select the SoftDevice Controller to enable this feature, it won't work with the Zephyr controller.

The Zephyr controller is the only controller that supports other modes than the connectionless transmitter so you have to use this for all other modes (and then you can't run Thread/Zigbee). The 802.15.4 MAC is not supported if I am not mistaken, we only support solutions using the MPSL.

Note: if you want to have a functional system then you should only use the sleepy end devices with the beacon as the Bluetooth stack will take control of the timing and this will increase packet loss for the Thread/Zigbee links. Not a problem for sleepy end devices but will reduce the performance of any router enabled devices. High advertising rate will be worse. This is always the case when using Bluetooth concurrent with Thread/Zigbee.

This should be supported in the nRF Connect SDK 2.0.0. Try the connectionless beacon example. Note that you have to select the SoftDevice Controller to enable this feature, it won't work with the Zephyr controller.

The Zephyr controller is the only controller that supports other modes than the connectionless transmitter so you have to use this for all other modes (and then you can't run Thread/Zigbee). The 802.15.4 MAC is not supported if I am not mistaken, we only support solutions using the MPSL.

Note: if you want to have a functional system then you should only use the sleepy end devices with the beacon as the Bluetooth stack will take control of the timing and this will increase packet loss for the Thread/Zigbee links. Not a problem for sleepy end devices but will reduce the performance of any router enabled devices. High advertising rate will be worse. This is always the case when using Bluetooth concurrent with Thread/Zigbee.