SOC ATE gains RF instrumentation
Rick Nelson, Chief Editor rnelson@tmworld.com -- Test & Measurement World, 12/1/2007 2:00:00 AM
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ATE companies have been responding to RF system-on-chip (SOC) vendors’ calls for innovative test approaches with a variety of new test system architectures and instrumentation. Getting a head start on instrumentation, Verigy in June introduced the Port Scale RF option for the V93000 test system; Port Scale RF includes a 6-GHz RF source card, a front-end card that provides 12 RF ports, an RF load-board interface, a 48-port RF calibration kit, and an MB AV8 card, which provides four arbitrary-waveform-generator cores and four digitizer cores.
In an interview during the International Test Conference, Greg McCarter, RF market development manager at Verigy, said the Port Scale RF combines its test capability into 8x14-in. cards that fit within the V93000 test head, eliminating the size penalty and capital costs associated with fitting rack-and-stack instruments within an ATE mainframe.
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| Verigy’s Port Scale RF offers high parallel efficiency to reduce test times in multisite applications. |
McCarter said that Port Scale RF targets chips containing multiple radios that operate at the same time, as well as ones that take advantage of Rx diversity—through MIMO techniques—to improve received signal quality. Port Scale RF can source multiple RF signals in parallel as well as multiple RF digitizers; hardware digital signal processing in each receiver enables simultaneous parallel calculation of measurement results.
McCarter noted that the Port Scale RF provides throughput improvements in single-site tests but added that the most significant throughput improvements occur in multisite test operations, with parallel test efficiency exceeding 85%. He said that the Port Scale RF is readily extensible from 12 to 48 ports to support quad-site tests. He considers 48 ports to be sufficient to handle the majority of RF device requirements within the next few years, although, he added, Port Scale RF is architecturally able to extend beyond that when the market needs it.
Verigy reports success with the Port Scale RF product. “Since June, we’ve engaged with eight of the top 10 semiconductor providers for the wireless world and have over 25 Port Scale RF systems installed,” said McCarter. And in November, Verigy announced that Oki Electric Industry had purchased the Port Scale RF for testing its wireless communications devices for set-top boxes, cell phones, PDAs, and other wireless products; Oki reported it will use the Port Scale RF as part of its test services business as well.
Of course, instrumentation is only part of the multisite-test picture. Addressing another aspect is Advantest, which targets multisite test with an integrated test cell that combines tester and handler, as I recounted in September (Ref. 1). On the instrumentation side, Advantest is not ceding ground to Verigy—in October it introduced its 12-GHz Model 12GWSGA card for its T2000 system. It provides 32 ports per module, and should your need for ports increase dramatically, you can add modules to extend capacity to 128 ports.
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