Hi. Welcome to the basic introduction video series on creating
Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and Wireless LAN (WLAN) test
with Keysight X8711A IoT Device Functional Test solution
This series of video will demonstrate the basic steps involved
in making a test program using instrument driver
in both C# and LabVIEW programming platforms
And in this episode, the first episode of the series
I will provide an overview of the programming flow
The X8711A test solution helps to streamline the
functional test processes of a wireless-enabled IoT devices
It establish the radio link connection with the DUT in normal
operation mode and enable the physical layer measurement
The Over-The-Air (OTA) RF test and verification
can be easily set up by adding an antenna coupler
and shield box to the solution
Engineers can immediately test a wireless-enabled DUT
that works in normal operation with the X8711A
without the needs in developing chipset control
This would reduce the development and production test time
tremendously and accelerate the product's time to market
The X8711A is built on the Keysight 34972A which is
a popular small footprint three-slot mainframe
and Keysight 34999A RF module is
slotted into the mainframe
It supports Bluetooth Low Energy 4.2 and
WLAN 2.4GHz signaling test and could be scaled up
to include other IoT wireless technologies in the future
The 34999A RF module is connected to a PC
for automation test using the ready test program
that is built based on the Keysight TAP platform
and measurement suites
Or you could develop your test program to
automate the testing using 34999A driver
It is a .NET DLL programming interface and can be
installed through the X8711A Install Wizard
In this video, I will show you the 5 basic steps
in making a test program using the 34999A driver
to perform receiver Packet Error Rate (PER)
and Transmitter Power measurement
The procedure started with the reference of 34999A driver DLL
to a program created in the integrated development
environment (IDE) that you are using
Install the driver DLL from X8711A Install Wizard
which is downloadable from the URL link
as shown on the screen
Once you have the 34999A driver installed
the driver DLL is located in the directory of your PC
as shown on the screen
The program begins with the creation of instrument session
This is a mandatory step to establish a communication link
with 34972A and 34999A before you could
send instruction or receiving the data from instrument
Once the instrument connection is established, we can start
setting up the system in signaling mode and configure the test
parameter of the measurements to be performed in next step
For example, the DL Power Level for receiver PER test
or the Frequency Channel and Trigger level
for transmitter Power Output measurement
At this step, you could start making the signaling link
with the DUT and execute the RF measurements and get the result
In receiver PER measurement, the tester is tracking the response
message from DUT to the request message sent from tester
Any missing response message or the message is received
with errors will be counted as bad packet
As in transmitter Output Power measurement, the tester
captures and measure the average power of the transmitted
signal of the DUT during the normal scanning process
At the final step before ending or closing the program
this is always a good practice to properly disconnect
the communication link with the instrument
and release driver handle to free up the memory space
used by the driver DLL
Step 1, 2 and 5 must be performed if the PC
or the instrument is power cycled
Step 3 and 4 can be repeated as many times as required
for a full test sequence of the measurements to cover
the chosen test plan for the device-under-test
It is advisable during the software test development
or debugging to catch any potential exceptions
due to the potential errors in the programming or setup
For example, the use of Try/Catch blocks
in Microsoft Visual Studio .NET allows the program
to catch any errors without the program aborting
Well, I hope you will find this video helpful
Please check out the next video in series that will demonstrate
the programming steps using C# or LabVIEW
Thank you for watching and for choosing Keysight