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 WPA supplicant, networking stack, and nRF Wi-Fi driver.

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.

WPA supplicant debug logs

The WPA supplicant manages the Wi-Fi® connection and is responsible for the 802.11 protocol. To debug issues related to the Wi-Fi connection, such as failure to initiate, failed connections, or disconnections, you can enable WPA supplicant debug logs. To build with WPA supplicant debug logs enabled, run the following commands:

With west

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

With CMake

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

Note

By default, this feature enables the CONFIG_LOG_MODE_IMMEDIATE Kconfig option, which can help prevent log buffer overflows. However, it may impact system timing and performance. If you experience issues with the system timing or performance, you can disable this option by setting the CONFIG_LOG_MODE_IMMEDIATE Kconfig option to n in your project configuration file.

Driver debug logs

The nRF Wi-Fi driver manages the data path and control path between the host and the nRF70 firmware. To debug issues related to the data path and control path, such as not receiving or sending packets, failures in sending commands, or not receiving events, you can enable 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 -- -Dshell_SNIPPET="nrf70-driver-debug"

With CMake

cmake -GNinja -Bbuild -DBOARD=nrf7002dk/nrf5340/cpuapp -Dshell_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 -- -Dshell_SNIPPET="nrf70-driver-verbose-debug"

With CMake

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

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)
nrf70 util tx_stats <vif_index>	Displays transmit statistics for the nRF Wi-Fi driver.	Data path debugging (nRF Wi-Fi driver TX)
nrf70 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)
nrf70 util rpu_stats_mem all [2]	Displays memory statistics for the nRF70 firmware (all modules, support for specific modules is also available).	nRF70 firmware debugging (Data and control path) even when the control plane is not functional

[1]

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

[2]

This command always works independent of the processors state as it retrieves the statistics from the RPU memory directly.

Note

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