Measurement Uncertainty Analysis of Measurement Grid Reduction for 5G IoT OTA Testing

For Over-the-air (OTA) testing of 5G Internet of Things (IoT) devices, test time reduction is of great significance. Among all potential methods, measurement grid reduction is a more direct one. This paper evaluates the effect of different measurement grid configuration on OTA performance of IoT devices. The determination of associated measurement uncertainty (MU) term is proposed and analyzed based on statistical distribution simulation. Finally, it can be observed that reduction of measurement grid resolution from current 30/30 (Δθ/ɸΔ) to 45/36 (Δθ/ɸΔ) could achieve a roughly 50% grid point reduction while requiring an uncertainty relaxation of less than 0.2 dB, which is considered to be acceptable for OTA testing of IoT devices.