Range Inquiry on nRF905 & nRF95E

Wireless & IoT
1

:smiley: Hi,

could anyone advice on what range they have attained outdoors with suggested antennas for the nRF905 series IC’s?

I am trying to achieve a range of 500 - 600 meters using an tranceiver device.

I am contraint by size.

Thanks in advance.

Peter :smiley:

2

PeterGPT:
:smiley: Hi,

could anyone advice on what range they have attained outdoors with suggested antennas for the nRF905 series IC’s?

I am trying to achieve a range of 500 - 600 meters using an tranceiver device.

I am contraint by size.

Thanks in advance.

Peter :smiley:

Look at some of the ANT-916 antennas from Linx that DigiKey carries.

You might also try the Splatch antenna if size matters a lot. Use the

50-ohm matching network in the nRF905 data sheet. In my experience,

500 meters is really pushing it with the nRF905, even line of sight. Remember that the 905 puts out only 10 milliwatts. Having said this, the 905 is much much better in terms of range than the nRF2401. I have used both extensively.

3

I am always stumped by the poor range of the 433/868 based devices vs the link-budgets I calculate.

Basically a wifi net manages 42% of my link budget calcs (300m vs 700m) while a 868 link only does 2% (300m vs 13000m)!

Looking at signal strength indicator for the few packets it does manage to receive acks on, the signal is maxed out. This leads me to conclude the poor range many see may be coding-based. The FSK/GFSK coding is simply not good for areas where multipath signalling will occur like a city landscape. (Where I’m testing.)