Design and development of an automated RF test platform for low noise Pre-Amp

The testing process of a low noise RF pre-amp in most of the semiconductor fabrication industries is either fully manual or employs expensive test systems. An efficient and low cost automated testing system is elucidated in this paper. The design and development of the automated RF test system is realized. The whole process involves the development of an Automated Test System (ATE) and a software test application to control the tests. The test system uses a RF network analyzer, to automatically measure s-parameter values at 63.86 MHz and 127.72 MHz, depending upon the operating frequency of the pre-amplifier. The system primarily focuses on automating the standard vector network analyzer. The costs involved in the production of a large volume of preamps used in 1.5T and 3T MRI machines is minimized using this automated RF testing methodology. In addition, test operator intervention is significantly reduced. The automated test system minimizes programming and firmware complexities in the test operator level and finally, generates a simple Pass/Fail status and impart the measured s-parameter data to the operator. A detailed analysis is performed to correlate the obtained result to the traditional test setup where in the devised testing method is found to be more accurate and reliable. Also, the impact of the proposed test setup on the final cost per unit is verified.