Part Number: CC2652R
We are helping a customer who is looking to add AoA direction-finding capabilities to an existing, mature RTLS product. This RTLS system of proprietary transmitters and receivers uses a custom 2.4 GHz RF link-layer protocol that leverages the BLE PDU format but does not use BLE GAP/GATT profiles. This protocol has been implemented (alternatively on different devices and device-generations) directly on top of radio hardware I/O interfaces, with chip-specific radio drivers, and in at least one instance on a vendor-supplied BLE stack. Their goal is to add new AoA-capable transmitters and receivers to their system hardware offering along with updated system software to support the new devices. I have been asked to help them evaluate the available BLE-capable MCUs from various silicon vendors and help determine which ones would be best suited for their new hardware devices.
Among their list of candidates is TI’s CC2652 family of chips, but after reviewing the available specifications, documentation, example code, and posts on this forum, I am uncertain if this MCU can be used to add the AoA features they want. Specifically, their requirements include the ability of the new receiver to perform acquisition of phase and amplitude samples from a CTE appended to an arbitrary packet (not a BLE 5.1 advertisement) as determined by the receiver’s firmware. This would involve configuring the sampling interval and duration, antenna switching GPIO, and DMA buffer pointer prior to starting an Rx operation. While the CC2652 can obviously perform these operations under the context of the BLE5 stack, it is not at all clear to me whether or not it can be made to perform these operations outside the BLE5 stack for a proprietary RF stack.
Can you provide any clarity on whether this is a supported application of the CC2652, and – if so – where we can find more information on how to interface with the CC2652’s radio to perform the required functions?
Thanks.
