WLAN RF and Power Consumption Characterization

Abstract

WLAN chips are used in laptops, mobiles and various other portable market devices. As these Wi-Fi chips are mainly manufactured for portable devices and battery life is prime issue in these devices, testing and analyzing the chip for its power consumption is one of the necessary task during bring-up. The work in this report is mainly related to this power consumption side of the chip. The task of current measurement is performed for various test cases on variety of chip packages and at varied temperatures. Using automated current method of current measurement (CM), various quantitative and qualitative analysis are performed. Various practical issues faced while doing current measurement, crystal tuning are solved by understanding fundamental reasons behind them. Working principle of transmit power control (TPC) is analyzed and explored during debugging process. Some of the practical challenges faced during automation of current measurement setup like interfacing of instruments and measurement accuracy, are explained with proper reasoning and solutions. Apart from current measurement and debugging, various RF performance related tests are carried out to check various RF parameters of chip like EVM, Receiver Sensitivity, Harmonic Distortion etc. Depending upon simulation results generated by these tests, it is verified that customers’ specifications are met or not. If not met, respective teams are informed to take corrective actions.