A cost effective method to test RF power on the ATE in manufacturing

Today the device that required intensive RF testing in mass production is commonly performed using the expensive high end automated test equipment (ATE) installed with RF/microwave resources for measuring and analyzing the RF signals. We can reduce test cost if one could develop the RF test on the basic ATE without RF resources. The paper proposes a test method using the on board RF power detector to measure the RF output signal beyond 1.0GHz for a device under test (DUT) with expected power level from -5dBm to +3dBm. The proposed method has been applied to test clocking and timing devices with internal voltage control oscillator (VCO) in the production and achieved significant test time improvement.