RF is ubiquitous, found in cell phones, satellite-based navigation, tuners, set-top boxes, WLAN, Bluetooth, FM Radio, UWB, PCs and laptops. In the past, RF parts were separate, individual "jelly bean" parts. Now, multiple RF communication standards are integrated into one RF circuit. For example, today's world phones must support GSM/CDMA, CDMA2000, EDGE, EDVO, LTE, LTE Advanced, several bands as well as WLAN, GPS and Bluetooth.

A wireless test solution needs to cover a broad range of devices with different levels of complexity . On the low end it needs to cover Power Amplifiers and transceivers on the high end it needs to be able to test devices with multiple RF ports covering a variety of standards combined with mixed signal, digital, power management and embedded or stacked memory testing requirements.

V93000 Wireless Test Solution – Port Scale RF

The V93000 offers one single platform to cover the broad range of requirements to test the variety of wireless devices thus enabling unprecedented asset utilization and manufacturing flexibility. This combined with lowest cost of tests results in a widespread market acceptance of the V93000 RF solution and sets a new standard for testing next generation RF devices.

Lowest Cost-of-Test with Scalable, Parallel RF Test

Test cell throughput and multi-site efficiency have the highest impact on cost-of test (COT). The V93000 Port Scale RF architecture makes key contributions in several dimensions.

• High multisite through # of RF ports
  Port Scale RF can be configured with up to 96 RF ports to handle the increasing complexity of multiple radios integrated into a single device, and to enable multi-site testing of these highly integrated devices while maintaining the ability to scale down for low-cost testing of low-integration RF devices.
• Multisite efficiency
  With its parallel RF test capability, Port Scale RF easily doubles the RF multi-site efficiency of previous generation RF ATE, delivering greater than 95% efficiency.
• Industry leading single site throughput
  Previous generations of RF SOC ATE offered one RF receiver multiplexed to many RF ports, resulting in inefficient serial multi-site test. Scale RF offers up to 8 parallel RF receivers for true parallel test, so four devices can be tested in parallel AND two RF ports on each device can be tested concurrently, or up to 8 devices can be tested in parallel. Further parallelism is introduced through hidden upload, multithreading for parallel upload and data processing and through concurrent test. With the hidden upload feature testing can continue while large amounts of data are transferred to the workstation for processing. In addition data processing can be done in parallel with the data upload using multithreading. With concurrent test it is even possible to test different cores in parallel (e.g RF and digital). In addition to parallelism the throughput is further improved by fast frequency and power level changes and with the industry’s lowest noise floor (-161 dBm/Hz) resulting in fewer acquisitions and less averaging.

High performance, high quality test at wafer level through Direct Probe^TM solution

WLCSP require test coverage of final test at probe to enable “known good die” testing. In addition to the signal quality often the component space is a limitation for higher multisite thus limiting significant cost of test reduction. With it’s breakthrough Direct Probe^TM probe card interface technology the V93000 offers 4 times the component space on the probe card with optimal signal integrity to allow “known good die” testing with higher multisite already at probe.

Fastest Time to Market

Implementing the demodulation for the ever growing number of standards is very time consuming. To significantly speed up test program development and with this reduce the time to market the V93000 provides a comprehensive ready to use demodulation library which covers all major standards and which is continuously extended. Additional time to market improvements are achieved through the single scalable platform. Engineering time is reduced through test program reuse. Training needs are limited due to a single, familiar test system.

Unprecedented asset utilization and manufacturing flexibility through single platform

The Verigy V93000 SOC Test Platform offers the widest application coverage in the industry, handling the latest generation devices that contain, for example, hi-fi quality audio, video capability, RF and high-speed digital interfaces. The wide application coverage results in unprecedented asset utilization and manufacturing flexibility. Additional efficiencies are gained from the consistent software platform, the same hardware modules from one system to the next (digital, analog, RF, etc.) in a choice of compact, small or large testhead, DUT board reuse and use of the same docking hardware and positioning, which results in a consistent prober and handler setup on the test floor.

Port Scale RF Introduction