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nRF8001 Development Kit User Guide v2.0
5
Testing the physical layer with Direct Test Mode
To test the RF performance of the physical (PHY) layer of the
Bluetooth
low energy stack in nRF8001 you can
use the Direct Test Mode (DTM) interface. This interface is compliant with the description in the
Bluetooth
Specification, Version 4.0, Volume 6, Part F. It can be used for performance testing, tuning your prototypes
and compliance testing.
The DTM is accessed through a dedicated UART interface on nRF8001 and through the ACI (SPI) interface.
This interface is only available when the nRF8001 is in test mode. Please see the
nRF8001 Product
Specification
for information on the interface and how to enter test mode.
The DTM is designed for use with
Bluetooth
test equipment. If you don't have a
Bluetooth
tester you can
access the interface using this Development Kit and using nRFgo Studio to run the tests. The nRFgo Studio
DTM requires that the
ble_set_in_test_mode_ACI
program must be flashed/uploaded to the Arduino
board.
Figure 3
Hardware setup for testing with Direct Test Mode
5.1
Testing the physical layer on your own product
The DTM (Direct Test Mode) must be available on your product so that it can be qualified as a
Bluetooth
low
energy product. This means that your application must have a way of setting the nRF8001 in test mode and
have connections to the UART interface.
ble_set_in_test_mode_UART
is used to set the nRF8001 in test
mode over UART.
ble_set_in_test_mode_ACI
is a simple demo example showing how nRF8001 is put into the test state.
From the source code you can see how the ACI command
Test
is used to set the device in test mode.
