Radio Test and BT exlusive coexistense in same firmware image

RE: Radio Test and BT exlusive coexistense in same firmware image

Taavi Jantson — Mon, 27 Mar 2023 09:25:45 GMT

Thank you.

That is exactly what was needed.

I have verified that no more crashes for the radio test example.

Note for future users! Quite the latest nRF SDK is required to use this solution.

RE: Radio Test and BT exlusive coexistense in same firmware image

Susheel Nuguru — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 12:48:55 GMT

The peripherals seems to be owned at mpsl_init which is at the system startup. CONFIG_BT=y seems to translate to mpsl owership of these restricted peripherals.

Please add below in your proj.conf

DYNAMIC_DIRECT_INTERRUPTS=y
MPSL_DYNAMIC_INTERRUPTS=y

and uninitalize mpsl in your radio test initialization after the clock is configured as below

	err = mpsl_lib_uninit();
	if (err) {
		printk("Unable to uninit MPSL\n");
		return;
	}

This will remove the controller's ownership of those peripherals.

RE: Radio Test and BT exlusive coexistense in same firmware image

Susheel Nuguru — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 12:29:36 GMT

Taavi,

I can reproduce the restart when enabling CONFIG_BT=y. At this point it does not look like this is due to writing to RADIO registers. Most likely a stack corruption. I haven't figured that out yet. But I am asking the softdevice controller team as to when the controller takes ownership of the peripherals exactly. Will be back to you when I have more info.

RE: Radio Test and BT exlusive coexistense in same firmware image

Taavi Jantson — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 11:24:53 GMT

You can very easily reproduce the issue by taking the radio test example 'nrf\samples\peripheral\radio_test', adding CONFIG_BT=y to the configuration and executing the command 'start_tx_modulated_carrier' from the command line.

The first problem you will notice is that the function static uint8_t rnd8(void) will never return as the event doesn't get active. This random number generation can be replaced by something else and is not important right now. So to continue I just replaced this with the standard lib rand() function.

Next, you should observe the not intended system reset after the function nrf_radio_task_trigger(NRF_RADIO, NRF_RADIO_TASK_TXEN) gets called.

For some reason, the radio test example gives just plain system reset and in my product application I get MPSL ASSERT, but still, both are bad.

devzone.nordicsemi.com/.../0333.radio_5F00_test.zip

RE: Radio Test and BT exlusive coexistense in same firmware image

Susheel Nuguru — Thu, 23 Mar 2023 10:52:50 GMT

I was assuming that nothing is owned by the softdevice controller before ble is enabled, but I am not 100% sure about this.

Can you attach your project here so that I can test what causes this hardfault?