Testing mmWave Phased Arrays for the 5G New Radio

As the wireless industry continues the move to 5G, the development and subsequent testing of mmWave radios for both base stations and user equipment still face numerous hurdles. The need to test most conformance and performance metrics through the antenna array at these frequencies poses significant challenges and has resulted in excessively large measurement uncertainty estimates to the point where the resulting metrics themselves may be useless. A large contribution to this measurement uncertainty is the impact of the over-the-air (OTA) test range used, driving the industry towards expensive compact range reflector systems in order to overcome the path loss considerations associated with direct far-field measurements. However, this approach necessitates the use of a combined axis measurement system, which implies the need for considerable support structure to hold the device under test and manipulate it in two orthogonal axes. This paper explores some of the limitations and considerations involved in the use of traditional “RF transparent” support materials for mmWave device testing.