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Fixed-mobile convergence is spurring on wireless applications, said keynote speaker Anil Kripalani on June 5 at the IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium (IMS) in Honolulu, HI. Kripalani, senior VP for global technology affairs at Qualcomm, predicted that wireless handheld devices will let consumers make purchases, navigate, watch TV, access the Internet, interact with smart buildings, and monitor their health.

As RF applications proliferate, the chips, boards, and products that serve them will present numerous design challenges. Also at the IMS, Guy Sene, a VP and GM at Agilent Technologies, described two key technologies—3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) and WiMAX—and Agilent’s strategies for addressing them, which include providing products ranging from ADS design-automation software to the MXZ-1000 manufacturing test system for WiMAX consumer premises equipment (CPE) and PC cards. The system supports fixed (IEEE 802.16-2004) and mobile (IEEE 802.16e-2005) systems using a point-to-point or point-to-multipoint architecture.

The MXZ-1000 WiMAX manufacturing test system combines the Agilent MXA signal analyzer, MXG signal generator, and an interface unit. Courtesy of Agilent Technologies.

Of course, key to the success of consumer wireless products will be the ability to test the chips that go into them. In a phone interview, Keith Lee, president and CEO of Advantest America, said it’s getting easy to drop RF circuitry onto a substrate but that testing that circuitry is a complex task. Lavi Lev, CEO of Credence Systems, noted in an e-mail exchange that increasing RF integration will require test systems that are flexible and that can be easily adapted to customer requirements. And Mark Jagiela, president of the Teradyne Semiconductor Test Division, said in a phone interview that mixed digital and RF devices pose challenges in deciding whether to use an “uber tester” for single-insertion test or to distribute test among multiple test systems.

Lee, Lev, and Jagiela will participate in the SEMI Test Summit during Semicon West in San Francisco, and you can expect RF test to be one of the topics they discuss. Verigy president and CEO Keith Barnes will join them. He didn’t comment specifically on RF test in an interview before the event, but Verigy’s RF direction is suggested in its June 26 introduction of the Port Scale RF card for the V93000 SOC test platform (see "Verigy targets consumer, RF, and nanoelectronic devices"). The instrument provides the RF measurement capability required to test devices containing integrated RF, mixed-signal, digital, and power-management circuitry as well as memory.

The SEMI Test Summit, which I will moderate, will be held at 5:30 p.m. on July 18 in the Moscone Center West Hall, Level 2. Nextest Systems president Tim Moriarty is also slated to participate.

rnelson@tmworld.com