Demystifying production test of UWB devices

The emergence of UWB technology, however, creates both economic and technological challenges. On the economics side, the addition of the UWB communication interface must not add significant cost to the consumer product (television, DVD player, digital camera, etc.). The initial price target for a four-chip UWB set—including an RF front end, an RF transceiver, a digital baseband IC, and a media access controller (MAC)—is less than $15.

In particular, as the ultra-wideband name implies, the modulation bandwidth that the device employs is an order of magnitude larger than even the latest wireless LAN (WLAN) or WiFi devices. Because the technology has some nontraditional test requirements, it is very difficult to use a traditional production test strategy for UWB devices.

But despite what you may think, you don't need specialized test equipment to test UWB devices. It is possible to meet device manufacturers' test requirements by using a mixture of familiar techniques combined with design-for-test (DFT) creativity. While there are daunting challenges in the testing of UWB devices, a solution can be found on readily available production testers that minimizes the test cost per device. Read more about details of the test challenges and how you can meet them.