This application report provides the methods about doing RF radio testing on end-equipment devices that use TI SimpleLink™ CC26xx/CC13xx wireless MCU’s. Bluetooth® RF radio testing can be done with two types of PC tools: SmartRF™ Studio and BTool. These tools provide similar functions. But they need different methods. Customers can refer to this document and plan for their suitable testing processes.
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Bluetooth® is a registered trademark of Bluetooth SIG.
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TI SimpleLink MCU provides two PC tools to test RF performance of Bluetooth devices. These are SmartRF Studio [1] and BTool [2]. Each tool has different requirements and benefits laid out in Table 1-1.
| SmartRF Studio | BTool |
|---|---|
| Benefit- Can be used without flashing the board with firmware | Drawback - Requires Production Test Mode (PTM) firmware to be flashed onto the board |
| Drawback - User needs to connect cJTAG lines to the board to control the device | Benefit - User can control the device by sending BTool set commands over UART |
This document mainly focuses on RF radio test. This document introduces the detailed processes for each tool to do RF performance test.