There are multiple factors influencing the overall robustness and co-existence performance of a PurePath Wireless network. Depending on the application, there can be trade-offs made to improve this
There are things that can be done to improve the audio link performance, but usually associated with a 'cost':
- Always keep the number of slaves to the lowest possible for a given application. In a multi-cast protocol, time is set aside for each possible slave for potential re-transmissions. If only 1 slave is needed, robustness will be worse if you enable more slaves to join the master etc.
- Reducing the audio sample rate will increase the total retransmission capacity. However, if the audio latency setting (in number of samples) also is reduced by the same factor to maintain latency "in time", the maximum number of retransmission attempts per slice is reduced.
- Latency is a direct trade-off vs. robustness. One is directly trading retransmission attempts for the lower latency. At the lowest settings this goes towards zero retransmission attempts.
- Number of audio channel supported. The more channels supported, the more bandwidth is needed over the air and the less robust the link will be.
- Direction of audio. Typically audio from master to slave is better when having uni-directional audio. For bi-directional links they are equally robust.,
- The various streaming formats requires different band-width. SLAC is more robust than PCM16 format.
- Increasing target output power and using the CC2590 range extender. Improves range at the cost of power consumption and to some extent co-existence.
- Audio fade-out on mute events can be disabled (under advanced settings) for slightly better re-transmission capability.
- Data side-channel. Note that enabling the use of data side-channel in host control mode will set aside a good portion of the available BW within a timeslot to data. This will significantly reduce the overall capacity for audio re-transmission in the timeslot. Optimal setting is Autonomous or Host control without data side-channel.
- RF data-rate. 2 Mbit settings is less vulnerable to RF multi-paths and improves sensitivity. This will have a positive effect on range, but is restricted to a few application. See configurator help system for more info.
- Antenna diversity: If implemented on slaves, it will combat multi-path effects and improve the in-range performance.
- Changing or disabling LBT: http://e2e.ti.com/support/low_power_rf/f/382/t/326031.aspx
It is up to the end user to consider which, if any, of the above is valid for their application.
Regards,
PPW team