A RADIO packet contains the fields PREAMBLE, ADDRESS, S0, LENGTH, S1, PAYLOAD, and CRC. For Long Range (125 kbps and 500 kbps) Bluetooth Low Energy modes, fields CI, TERM1, and TERM2 are also included.
The content of a RADIO packet is illustrated in the following figures. RADIO sends the fields in the packet according to the sequence shown in the figures, starting on the left.
PREAMBLE is sent with least significant bit first on air. The size of the PREAMBLE depends on the mode selected in the MODE register.
| Preamble | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| MODE | PCNF0.PLEN | When first bit of ADDRESS is 0 | When first bit of ADDRESS is 1 |
| Ble_1Mbit | 1 | 0xAA | 0x55 |
| Nrf_1Mbit | 1 | 0xAA | 0x55 |
| Nrf_2Mbit | 1 | 0xAA | 0x55 |
| Ble_2Mbit | 2 | 0xAAAA | 0x5555 |
| Nrf_4Mbit_0BT4 | 2 | 0xAAAA | 0x5555 |
| Nrf_4Mbit_0BT6 | 2 | 0xAAAA | 0x5555 |
| Ble_LR125Kbit | Any | 10 repetitions of 0x3C | |
| Ble_LR500Kbit | Any | 10 repetitions of 0x3C | |
| Ieee802154_250Kbit | Any | 4 repetitions of 0x00 | |
Radio packets are stored in memory inside instances of a RADIO packet data structure as shown in the following figure. The PREAMBLE, ADDRESS, CI, TERM1, TERM2, and CRC fields are omitted in this data structure. Fields S0, LENGTH, and S1 are optional.
The byte ordering on air is always least significant byte first for the ADDRESS and PAYLOAD fields, and most significant byte first for the CRC field. The ADDRESS fields are always transmitted and received least significant bit first. The CRC field is always transmitted and received most significant bit first. The endianness, meaning the order in which the bits are sent and received, of the S0, LENGTH, S1, and PAYLOAD fields can be configured via PCNF1.ENDIAN.
The sizes of the S0, LENGTH, and S1 fields can be individually configured via S0LEN, LFLEN, and S1LEN in PCNF0, respectively. If any of these fields are configured to be less than 8 bits, the least significant bits of the fields are used.
If S0, LENGTH, or S1 are specified with zero length, their fields will be omitted in memory. Otherwise, each field will be represented as a separate byte, regardless of the number of bits in their on-air counterpart.
Independent of the configuration of PCNF1.MAXLEN, the combined length of S0, LENGTH, S1, and PAYLOAD cannot exceed 258 bytes.