Production test enhancement techniques for MB-OFDM ultra-wide band (UWB) devices: EVM and CCDF

In the recent days, ultra-wide band (UWB) has drawn significant attention as an emerging wireless standard. While the multiband (MB) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) PHY standards (IEEE 802.15.3a) are still being formulated, the first set of UWB devices is set to hit the consumer market by the end of 2005. For MB-OFDM UWB devices to be successful in the marketplace it is necessary for their manufacturing and test costs to be very low. To reduce the cost of production test, we propose ´alternate´ tests for complex UWB transmitter specifications viz. EVM and complementary CDF (CCDF). The non-idealities present in UWB transmitters are a result of nonlinearities in DACs and ADCs, as well as the phase noise of the local oscillator (LO) used in the front-end of the transmitter. In this paper, production cost is minimized by reducing test time as well as using low-cost test equipment for performing the tests. The production tests generated for EVM and CCDF are easy to apply in a production test environment using a low-cost ATE and provides up to 10times savings in test time and 3times savings in test cost