5G UE PA R&D TESTING

Automated Solution with High Efficiency

5G New Radio (NR) presents dramatic challenges to the testing of User Equipment (UE) Power Amplifier (PA). Multiple frequency bands, flexible 5G operation mode, multiple PA performance metrics and the MIPI control interface increases the potential PA testing workload significantly. Manually repeating these tests under so many different scenarios can be costly and time consuming. An automated testing solution can help the test engineer to highly improve the testing efficiency.

In this application note, it introduces an example of automated testing of 5G UE PA with R&S signal generator, signal and spectrum analyzer, vector signal explorer software, power meter along with power supply.

The entire application note is organized with following structure:

Chapter 2 outlines the challenges to 5G UE PA testing.

Chapter 3 introduces the setup for 5G signal generation and analysis. For 5G signal generation, a batch program of converting *.CSV files with IQ vectors to ARB waveform files is introduced. For 5G signal analysis, the R&S®VSE software is recommended, which enables the separation of RF signal collection and measurement to improve testing efficiency.

Chapter 4 provides the informative content about the integration of MIPI control interface for the PA ON/OFF state switching and register configuration.

Chapter 5 gives a guide on the implementation of a quick power servo, in which the techniques to speed up the PA power level adjustment are discussed.

Chapter 6 summarizes the automated testing procedure.