Production testing equipment

[davman]

Hi,

Anyone familiar/experiened in production-test gear for BLE?

• Test sets, i.e. LitePoint, Anritsu, USRP, NI?

• What's relevant to test, i.e. output power, sensitivity, carrier & drift, etc.

• Test-coverage, i.e. what can the expensive gear above catch vs. a setup just using a simple nrf-dongle inside a shield-box?

[davman]

Hi Ketil,

Can you propose "one level up" when it comes to version of production testing.

The problems I see with using just a dongle is:

• a missing part, chip antenna or a u.fl. connector that popped loose inside the assembly will pair and work fine within a few meters.
• impedance issues caused by a bad PCB will detune the antenna (but still work), possibly violating certifications sending outside allowed freqencies.

I believe there must be alternative, more cost-efficient solutions vs. the 18.000 Euro LitePoint's, that still can cover more than just the most basic function-test?

i.e. like USRP + Gnu-radio anyone?

best David

[run_ar]

@davman, As suggested doing a connection test would show you if you have any RF issues as long as you measure the RSSI of the device under test. So if the rssi is much lower than expected you have an issue.