Three Fast Ways of Measuring Receiver Sensitivity in a Reverberation Chamber

The traditional way of evaluating receiver sensitivity is to measure the Total Isotropic Sensitivity (TIS) in an anechoic environment. Very few wireless terminals with small antennas are used in an anechoic environment. This paper will describe three alternative methods to measure the receiver sensitivity in a reverberation chamber, each of which can be done in less than 10 minutes which is much faster than measurements in anechoic chamber. The fastest method is the average fading sensitivity AFS that in contrast to TIS also be used to measure receiver sensitivity of multi antenna terminals for antenna systems with diversity and MIMO capability. The paper includes the first published TIS and AFS results for WCDMA terminals obtained in a reverberation chamber. The agreement to TIS measurements in anechoic chambers is shown to be good.