BLE RF distance range test

[Peter Lorentzon]

I`m searching after a document / description how to setup a user test case for BLE RF distance range measurements. Maybe Nordic have a smart phone app which we can use to test the BLE RF distance for different conditions and environment, e.g with and without long range, free line sight, wall between the our product the test equipment( smart phone with Nordic app)

[Jørgen Holmefjord]

Hi,

As far as I know, we do not have have any documents describing this. However, we do have multiple blog posts and examples for testing long-range and various connection parameter settings:

• Throughput and long range demo blog-post
• Testing Long Range (Coded PHY) with Nordic solution blog-post
• Long range demo kit example
• Bluetooth 5 multi link demo example
• ATT_MTU Throughput Example in the SDK.

It is also possible to use a phone running nRF Connect application, together with an SDK application to test when the connection is lost. For instance, the BLE Interactive Command Line Interface Example allows you to control the BLE parameters through a CLI. If you want to test throughput in different scenarios, you can either use two nRF DKs running the ATT_MTU example, or you can test with a phone using the BLE image transfer demo (requires a camera module connected to the DK, or some code modifications to replace the image with random data).

Note that only the latest flagship models of phones support Bluetooth 5 features like long-range (Coded PHY) and high-throughput (2 Mbit), and you are also limited by the phone SW/HW implementation.

Best regards,
Jørgen