Debugging

This guide describes how to debug applications that use the nRF70 Series companion chips.

Software

The scope of this section is limited to the nRF Wi-Fi driver, WPA supplicant and networking stack.

Enable debug features

The nRF Wi-Fi driver, WPA supplicant, and networking stack have debug features that can be enabled to help debug issues.

You can enable debug features by using the Snippets feature.

For example, to build the Wi-Fi: Shell sample for the nRF7002 DK with debugging enabled, run the following commands.

Driver debug logs

To build with driver verbose, firmware interface, and BUS interface debug logs enabled, run the following commands:

Basic driver debug

With west

west build -p -b nrf7002dk/nrf5340/cpuapp samples/wifi/shell -- -Dnrf_wifi_shell_SNIPPET="nrf70-driver-debug"

With CMake

cmake -GNinja -Bbuild -DBOARD=nrf7002dk/nrf5340/cpuapp -Dnrf_wifi_shell_SNIPPET="nrf70-driver-debug" samples/wifi/shell
ninja -C build

BUS interface level debug

With west

west build -p -b nrf7002dk/nrf5340/cpuapp samples/wifi/shell -- -Dnrf_wifi_shell_SNIPPET="nrf70-driver-verbose-debug"

With CMake

cmake -GNinja -Bbuild -DBOARD=nrf7002dk/nrf5340/cpuapp -Dnrf_wifi_shell_SNIPPET="nrf70-driver-verbose-debug" samples/wifi/shell
ninja -C build

WPA supplicant debug logs

To build with WPA supplicant debug logs enabled.

With west

west build -p -b nrf7002dk/nrf5340/cpuapp samples/wifi/shell -- -Dnrf_wifi_shell_SNIPPET="wpa-supplicant-debug"

With CMake

cmake -GNinja -Bbuild -DBOARD=nrf7002dk/nrf5340/cpuapp -Dnrf_wifi_shell_SNIPPET="wpa-supplicant-debug" samples/wifi/shell
ninja -C build

Note

Enabling the CONFIG_LOG_MODE_IMMEDIATE Kconfig option can help prevent log buffer overflows. However, it may impact system timing and performance.

Statistics

The nRF Wi-Fi driver, firmware, and networking stack have statistics feature that can be enabled to help debug issues.

You can enable statistics by using either the wpa-supplicant-debug, nrf70-driver-verbose-debug, or nrf70-driver-debug snippets. See Enable debug features.

Statistics table

Command	Description	Functional area
net stats	Displays statistics for the networking stack, network interfaces, and network protocols.	Data path debugging (Networking stack)
wifi statistics	Displays frame statistics for the nRF Wi-Fi driver.	Data path debugging (nRF Wi-Fi driver)
wifi_util tx_stats <vif_index>	Displays transmit statistics for the nRF Wi-Fi driver.	Data path debugging (nRF Wi-Fi driver TX)
wifi_util rpu_stats all [1]	Displays statistics for the nRF70 firmware (all modules, support for specific modules is also available).	nRF70 firmware debugging (Data and control path)

[1]

This command only works when the nRF70 control plane is functional, as it uses the control plane to retrieve the statistics.

Note

All statistics, especially data path statistics, must be collected multiple times to see the incremental changes and understand the behavior.