Assistance in the Bluetooth SIG Qualification Process

[Thomas Nenning]

Dear Nordic Team,

The founders Lukas Pilat and Robert Kopka have met your representatives at the Light & Building conference yesterday. They recommended us to get in touch with Nordic via a private ticket to get assistance through the Bluetooth SIG Qualification process.

So far we have registered with die Bluetooth SIG, defined a project with our best knowledge, bought the PTS dongle and got familiar with the PTS Software. Currently we try to pass all test steps.

It would be great if you could give us some tips and tricks in general about the whole qualification process and how to efficiently qualify a product. Further a technical contact for detailed questions concerning the single test steps in PTS would help us a lot.

Sincerly,

  Thomas

[Thomas Nenning]

Hey,

We are developing a custom hardware, which is very different to the layout of the nRF52 Development Kit PCA10040 (I assume you regard to this layout when you say "reference layout")

Since we therefore need to go with "Required Testing", here some questions:

1. Should we include another prequalified design (QDID)? As explained in the introduction, do we use the nrf52832 with the S132 v3.0.0. If "Yes",  which design (QDID) shall we include
2. If we inlcude a QDID: Shall we modify it to represent what the capabilities of our firmwware are  or leave it as it is?
3. Eitherway the consistency check will force us to include functionalities we have not implemented as our product does not need to support it, like non-discoverable e.g. Is it ok if we write a special firmware just to cover these tests but which will not be part of the final product-firmware?

Thanks in advance,

   Thomas

[Joakim Jakobsen]

I'm not sure why you face these issues, as I believe you should get past this when you don't refer to the QDID before the "Product declaration".

I've forwarded your question internally to get clarification on this.

Hopefully I'll get back to you with an answer tomorrow. 

Best regards.

 

[Joakim Jakobsen]

Hi again!

So I got some feedback on your case.

You should not go with the "Required testing". This is not needed unless adding any layer to our stack or something similar.

You should go for the "No required testing",
and refer to our already qualified design (QDID 85568).

You should perform the RF-PHY tests to make sure everything is in order, but there is no need to submit the RF-PHY tests.
You should keep the tests. And in the case of an audit from BT SIG, refer to the RF-PHY tests to confirm and document that this have been tested.

I'm sorry for the delays and misunderstandings.
Hopefully this will make your qualification process alot easier.

Make sure to let me know you have any further issues, and we will quickly sort them out.

Best regards,
Joakim.

[Thomas Nenning]

Dear Joakim,

Thanks for your answer. Just refering to QDID 85568 and going with "No required testing" makes the qualification much easier. We would now like to assess how our changes could affect the results of the RF-PHY test. Could you therefore tell me which hardware was used for the RF-PHY test for the QDID 85568 including, RF-Layout, BOM, etc.?

Best regards,

   Thomas

 

 

[Joakim Jakobsen]

Hi!

You can download our reference layouts here:

nRF52 Series - Reference Layouts

They include Altium Designer files, production files, a bill of materials, and schematic and layout files.

Let me know if you have further questions.

Best regards,
Joakim.