RF_CH Register

Address

0x05

Description

The RF_CH register is used to set the channel on which the radio will broadcast.

Contents

This table is copied from the nRF24L01 product specification (page 54).

Name
Bit
Reset Value
Type Description
Reserved 7 0 R/W Only ‘0’ allowed
RF_CH 6:0 0000010 R/W Sets the frequency channel nRF24L01 operates
on

Comments

Barclay, Craig, and Hoole give a table of channel ranges in the 2.4 GHz band:

Channel Frequency (Mhz)
Description
0 to 82 2400 to 2482 Legal, but noisy (conflicts with wireless LAN, Bluetooth, etc.)
83 to 99 2483 to 2499 Not legal for mobile
100 2500 Licensed in BC to Inukshuk Wireless
101 to 119 2501 to 2519 Legal
120 to 125 2520 to 2525 National and regional systems (Department of Defence, Telus)

Channels from 101 to 119 are preferred, as they are legal to use and have relatively low traffic.  The software driver sets the radio channel to channel 112 by default.

When the data rate is set to 2 Mbps, the radio uses two adjacent channels, so if students are using different channels to avoid interference they should be different by more than 2 MHz (e.g. 108, 110, 112, etc.).