Antenna Comparison of XIAO nRF52840, ESP32C3, ESP32C6 and MG24

Products & Technology XIAO
#1

Now that the XIAO nRF52840, ESP32C3, ESP32C6 and MG24 with on-board antennas and/or antenna switching functionality are available, I compared the performance.
Hopefully this will help anyone interested.

Measurements:
The transmitter advertises with varying Tx power, while the receiver scans and measures RSSI. As RSSI is greatly affected by antenna orientation and ambient conditions, measurements were taken under the same conditions as far as possible and in as short a time as possible. The communication distance is about 10 metres, separated by a wall.

The nRF52840’s on-board antenna has an RSSI about 5 dBm higher than the ESP32C6 and MG24, despite having smaller antenna element. This may be due to the lack of interfering components around it.

The external antenna of the MG24 has an RSSI about 5 dBm higher than the ESP32C3 and ESP32C6, but this may be due to the opening of the metal cover near the antenna connector.

The MG24 and nRf52840 graphs show limited RSSI in places, but TxPower may be limited by firmware.

AntennaComparison
AntennaComparison1022×793 129 KB

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XIAO MG24 BLE range
#2

The following information was found.

nRF52840 Data Sheet 6.20.15.4 Transmitter specification

-20 to +8 dBm TX power, configurable in 4 dB steps

\Arduino15\packages\SiliconLabs\hardware\silabs\2.2.0\variants\xiao_mg24\ble_silabs\include\sl_bt_api.h sl_bt_api.h: L1276-L1317

By default, the minimum radiated TX power level is configured to -3 dBm and the maximum radiated TX power level to 8 dBm.

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#3

Hi there,

Pretty Awesome Stuff :+1: I like the 4db steps they should all do that! IMO.
I’m skeptical on the MG24 because of the lack of published data , info… What are they trying to HIDE!? I’m guessing the Next benchmark is performance based on Cores? The M33 is better but with no good documentation it may as well be a Z80 :grin:

Thanks for the great work.
GL :slight_smile: PJ :v: Happy New Year!