RE: BLE RF distance range test

Jørgen Holmefjord — Tue, 07 Apr 2020 11:43:30 GMT

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