EMC Testing Firmware Advise

Hi, 

We are doing some RF certification testing, EMC and also FCC, and wondered if you had advise on setting the modem on and transmitting, potentially if there is some test modem firmware already available that you could point us to that would be great. 

When I have been to a test house before, technicians have expected that the modem should be able to transmit on a given frequency band, despite there being no cellular network available in an anechoic chamber. I don't know how that is possible to do. The last time we had to bring in a repeater to the chamber to get a network, and the technician did something to ensure he wasn't measuring the repeater. 

Now we are sending off a unit to be tested abroad, where apparently they can analyse NB-IoT connections by making the unit connect to their network, but I don't know how our FW will cope with that. As its a battery powered device designed to shut down as soon as its done with the connection, or shut down if it can't connect to it's server etc.  

Any advice welcome, 

Thanks, 

Damien

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  • Hi Dejan, 

    I spoke to a technician at the test house today. They have a CMW500 which they want our unit to connect to. They want to establish a connection on multiple bands across both NB-IoT and LTE-M, and run long term tests. 
    With AT%XRFTEST, will that establish a connection with a CMW500/a real world network? OR does it just turn on the receiver? 

    The way they are currently testing - I have a signal test feature in my firmware that will just turn the modem on and try and make a network connection, then after a certain period, get the signal level, and repeat for 5 periods. The maximum period is 4 minutes, so a total test time of 20 minutes (I think they still want longer). They are complaining that it takes a long time to establish a connection (2-5 minutes), and if they turn off a band it struggles to reconnect on another. I can't understand why it would work any differently to how it does here with different bands. 

  • Hi Damien,

    There is a guide for RF testing. Please have a look at testing RF performance.

    Best regards,
    Dejan

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