A built-in self-test strategy for wireless communication systems

Wireless communication is a rapidly expanding field and considerable research effort is underway. Electronic system manufacturers are actively trying to incorporate all of the RF, IF and baseband functions on the fewest possible ICs so as to reduce system size and cost, and to improve overall system performance. Unfortunately, without a coherent test strategy, any cost reduction gained by miniaturization will be offset by increased testing costs. In this work we propose a built-in self-test scheme for bandpass type systems such as those used in wireless communication devices. The scheme is centered around a high frequency oscillator based on bandpass delta-sigma modulation techniques and a digital extraction method. We will show through experiments that measures meaningful to the analog test engineer such as signal-to-noise ratio, frequency response and intermodulation distortion are obtainable with this method.