Bench instruments to the rescue for RFIC design and test
Rick Nelson, Chief Editor -- Test & Measurement World, 11/1/2005 2:00:00 AM
Logic designers can employ DFT tools and dedicated desktop debuggers to get their devices up and running, as described in our October cover story, "Design meets test." RF engineers don't have that luxury, though, as the RF arena suffers from a dearth of formal DFT methods and tools.
Consequently, RF designers—as well as logic designers dealing with gigahertz clock rates beyond the reach of normal logic-design tools—need to develop their own test approaches and configure their own RF instrumentation. It was the need for flexible, cost-effective instrumentation that led IC designer Steve Robalino to develop a $1000, 1-GHz signal generator, available from startup Signal Forge, where Robalino now serves as chief technical officer. The company offers application notes describing the use of the instrument in measuring parameters such as amplifier gain, 1-dB compression point, and third-order intercept point.
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| This real-time spectrum-analyzer display includes a Noisogram (upper right) showing phase-noise amplitude with respect to offset and time. Click here to see a larger version of this image. Courtesy of Tektronix. |
Help is also coming from a traditional instrument maker in the form of software suites that Tektronix offers to complement its real-time spectrum analyzers. Most recent are its signal-source analysis suite, introduced last month, and an RFID measurement suite, introduced in September. Bob Hiebert, director of marketing for real-time spectrum analyzers, reported that the latter helps to address customers' efforts to comply with relevant RFID standards, while the signal-source analysis suite arose in part to satisfy requests of designers of phase-locked-loop and voltage-controlled oscillators who wanted to see how the phase noise of their devices varies over time. The software generates what the company calls a Noisogram, which shows phase-noise amplitude with respect to offset and time.
Applications for the signal-source analysis suite extend beyond traditional RF areas like phase-noise measurement. "RF is everywhere now," Hiebert said, adding that the clock speeds now running on backplanes correspond to what used to be known as microwave frequencies. To meet the needs of digital designers dealing with RF effects, Tektronix engineering manager Akira Nara pointed out that the company's real-time spectrum analyzers and software can plot jitter vs. time—a characteristic that's mathematically related to phase noise vs. time but that is more readily understandable to a digital design engineer.
Just as digital designers are increasingly facing RF and microwave challenges, RF engineers are facing a new threat: software bugs. "A bad line of code in a DSP can lead to bad RF behavior," Hiebert said. Consequently, RF instruments and software need to address the needs of traditional RF and microwave engineers as well as digital hardware—and even software—designers.
Prototyping adapter
Design engineers using 0.5-mm-pitch, 84-position µBGA ICs can employ the Ironwood Electronics PA-BGA84C-P-Z-01 prototyping adapter, which can interface a 0.100-in.-center pin-grid array with a 10-GHz socket. Contact resistance is normally 10 mÙ. The bottom interface of the adapter is constructed with gold-plated machined terminal pins; the adapters can be optionally supplied with wire-wrap pins. Price: $516. www.ironwoodelectronics.com.
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