Ted, You mention your product uses the mPCIe card, so I'm guessing you have an Ethernet port. I am of the opinion that Ethernet based devices require maximum throughput (worst case) through radio and Ethernet at maximum cat5 length (worst case) to take proper emissions measurements and that testing with the ART tool is not correct. The ART program, intended for testing and developing the radio modules, does not behave the same way as Ath10k or QCA's closed driver and so the real world product behaves differently at maximum power with multiple chains. This results in products shipping over the approved limits. I see this in the lab test reports all the time. I don't see many other companies exercising the Ethernet like I am understood to believe is required, so you may need to check with your test lab on proper test methodology (testing to the letter instead of the 'spirit of the rules'). It certainly is harder to pass when exercising the Ethernet and that is why I suspect this corner is cut in other vendor testing (given the lack of filtering on the Ethernet ports in products).
Generating maximum duty throughput (ie, transmitting UDP at full size frame) using a utility like iperf, Ixia, Smartbits, Veriwave, etc would be my recommended method of generating the traffic. It is slower than transmitting null frames for the sole purpose of RF measurements, but I think this is the true, legal way for an Ethernet based wireless device. Best regards, Mike ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message: 1 Date: Tue, 10 Nov 2015 14:53:26 -0700 From: "Theodore A. Roth" <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Cc: Theodore Roth <[email protected]> Subject: FCC Continuous TX testing Message-ID: <cafmvbt38ld9tupvhwd2yksviljn-dx4hlwxzak9zxoxcur0...@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 We are working on a product that uses an Ath10k mini-PCIe module and we are preparing for FCC testing. Are there any facilities in the Ath10k driver for putting the device into continuous transmit mode? Between google searches and looking in the linux-4.3.y driver source, I don't see anything promising. I did come across the CONFIG_NL80211_TESTMODE option, but that hasn't yielded anything (although I still have some more digging in the source to do there). I did come across references to the Atheros Radio Test tool, but could not find any references as to how to obtain it from QCA. I also saw references to a QCA open source NDA program, but could not find any links to actually join this program. Is it still active? Any insight from those that have done FCC testing with ath10k products would be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Ted Roth ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ ath10k mailing list [email protected] http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/ath10k
