What is ERRCS Testing?
ERRCS Testing, or ERRCS Grid Testing, is a measure of signal strength, or RSSI in a building. The exact signal strength measurements (if required at all) should be spelled out in your local adoption of IFC 510.4.1. A typical grid measurement will require that 95% of areas will have (1) RSSI of greater than -95dBm, (2) DAQ of greater than 3.0, (3) Bit Error Rate (BER) less than 2.6%, and (4) Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) greater than 16dB, or some combination of these measurements, with some variations based on your jurisdiction. At the end, you should end up with a grid test that looks like the following image:
However, the image doesn’t show the full story. We see only green in the results which tells us this is a passing building. We see the signal strength values in each grid, which range in this case from -56dBm to -90dBm. But we don’t see anything about DAQ, SNR, or BER. The tables that follow have the rest of the required information:
In this table we can see that the DL power is always greater than -95dB, the SNR (in this case, S/N – they mean the same thing) is always greater than 16dB, the FBER (Frame Bit Error Rate, which is slightly different from BER) is always less than 2.6%, and the DL and UL DAQ is always greater than 3. This leads to a passing result with all of the enforced requirements. These results account for passing 95% of the general floor area. The fire code also mentions that we must have radio communication in 99% of critical areas. For the building being discussed now, the critical areas include stairwells and elevator lobbies, however, they could also include fire alarm rooms, fire riser rooms, standpipe locations, building exits, electrical rooms, or wherever is enforced by your local jurisdiction.
The critical area test results also show passing results. Note that this ERRCS grid test was done after a BDA installation was completed and commissioned (learn about our commissioning services here). We see better results out of the critical areas than we do in the general floor areas, which is typical when designing a system with critical areas in mind.
ERRCS Design & Testing can complete benchmark and post-install ERRCS Testing for any building and any radio network, nationwide!