ESP32 BLE - how many simultaneous unique iBeacon readings?

[neilyoung]

Hi,

is there any information regarding the question: How many unique iBeacons can be scanned (say per second) simultaneously? Some hardware allow for max 20, some for 50+. How many beacons can be scanned by the ESP32?

[heyinling]

Hi,

Not sure if I get your point.
The host will send all adv reports to gap callback and let user process them. The scan API will not ask controller to filter duplicates so all adv will be reported. I think it's up to the application behavior.

You can try examples/bluetooth/gatt_client, modify main/gattc_demo.c , modify `gattc_profile_a_event_handler` to calculate.

[neilyoung]

@heyinling: The question was about the capabilities of the ESP32 hardware (BLE part): There are some other chips available, which for instance are limited with respect to the number if unique iBeacons which can be received in a given timespan. I know about TI chips, which are limited to 20-25. What are the physical limits of the ESP32? How many unique iBeacons can be received and are delivered to the gatt client say within one second, given that each of the beacons has an advertisement interval of far less then 1 second.

[heyinling]

I think we can setup the following test:

setting up 3 devices advertising on each adv channel with interval 10ms.
use ESP32 do full duty cycle passive or active scan for 1 second and check how many HCI adv events it receives.

The controller should passthrough the adv packets to host, I think there's no difference on scanning same device or different devices.

[neilyoung]

Well in fact - it doesn't even scan a single RadBeacon Dot, what do I expect....