Wireless Device Testing App Note

By Walt Strickler, Giga-tronics Incorporated

Unlike most other electronic products, many wireless devices are 100 percent tested either as complete products or as radio modules. With fierce competition among manufacturers driving down profit and the very high volume of devices produced, controlling the cost of test is critical. This article describes how adding switching to achieve better utilization of test assets through parallel testing can offer significant time and money savings on wireless device testing.

With such wide variety of wireless devices, it is no wonder that there are a number of test methodologies. For this discussion, three categories of test will be discussed. For some manufacturers, for example a printer producer, the wireless aspect of the product is just an accessory. In many of those cases, the manufacturer will buy a complete radio module and integrate it into their end product. A test methodology often used is to inspect and test the radio modules when received. The thought is that if the radios are good when received, they won't get broken when integrated into the product.