NUCLEO-WL33CC1 Range

[KARTHIC_V]

Hello ST community,

Just thought of buying NUCLEO-WL33CC1 for development of flight telemetry. But I have few doubts before buying.

1. What is the radio coverage distance with the default antenna that comes along with the kit? Assuming the test area is urban.
2. Whether the range can be extended more with a different antenna to cover about 2km. Has anyone tried it?

Thanks,
Karthic V

[STTwo-32]

Hello @KARTHIC_V 

At the moment, we have not performed radiated measurements for communication range. However, we plan to conduct these measurements (not on a specific period to communicate).

In the meantime, I can provide some guidance if you wish to start their own measurements.

First, I recommend they review AN5528 (Radio Communication Range Estimation in the ISM Band), which we published a couple of years ago.
This Application Note covers sub-GHz and BLE scenarios.
They can begin by following the debugging procedure outlined in Section 3.

Since you are interested in an urban area environment, it’s important to start with some preliminary tests:

- Check the void RSSI with a 50Ω load at the desired channel filter (based on their application) to verify if the result aligns with the theoretical value, assuming NF = 6dB and temperature = 25°C.
- Measure the RSSI with the antenna to assess the antenna's impact and the overall environmental noise in the urban area.
- Perform RSSI vs. distance measurements to confirm the logarithmic trend.
- Conduct PER vs. distance measurements to evaluate packet error rate performance.

The antenna included in the kit is the ANT-SS900 (824-928 MHz Compressed Whip / Stubby Antenna) with a +2dBi gain.
The customer can use the STM32CubeWiSE-RadioExplorer tool (STM32CubeWiSEre: https://www.st.com/en/development-tools/stm32cubewisere.html) to evaluate RSSI and PER performance.

Additionally, I’d like to mention that we also support output power levels of +20 dBm (standalone) and +27 dBm (with external PA) to enhance communication range. 

PS: we should be able to cover 2km distance.
Please check section 2.2.2 Measurement #2 results (AN5528) "In this experiment we reached 2.7 km with packet error rate equal to zero ..." measurement done on S2-LP but consider that STM32WL3 has a better sensitivity, so I'd expect similar or even better result with same conditions (Pout, antenna gain, environment).

The main point could be the urban area's noise that's why I asked you to start with preliminary tests.

Best Regards.

STTwo-32