Impact of probe placement error on MIMO OTA test zone performance

Abstract

Standardization work for MIMO OTA testing methods is currently ongoing, where a multi-probe anechoic chamber based solution is an important candidate. In this paper, the probes located on an OTA ring are used to synthesize a plane wave field in the center of the OTA ring, and the EM field for each probe is obtained using FDTD simulation. This paper investigates the extent to which we can control the field structure inside the test zone where the device under test is located. The focus is on performance deterioration introduced by probe placement error including OTA probe orientation error and location mismatch, which are general non-idealities in practical MIMO OTA test systems.

Measurement Verification of Plane Wave Synthesis Technique Based on Multi-Probe MIMO-OTA Setup

“…If the synthesized plane wave is arriving to the test zone from the direction where one of the OTA antennas are located, the test zone performance is expected to be the best since essentially only one relevant probe will synthesize the field. The worst case is the synthesis of a plane wave field impinging from an angle exactly in the middle of two adjacent OTA probes [5]. The focus of this paper is the variations of the measured and simulated field over different orientations, so the measured power and phase are normalized to mean values.…”

“…Apart from the location of the test dipole, asymmetric orientation of the test dipole may also affect the field structure. Impact of OTA probe antenna placement error including orientation error and location mismatch on the test zone field structure is investigated in detail in [5].…”

Dynamic and Electrical Characteristics of Microprobe Testing in Microelectronics Packaging

“…With the development of the ICs, probe testing has also expanded to the package testing [7], [8]. Since the bump diameter of high-density and high-performance IC chip will become smaller and the bump pitch will become narrower [9], [10], corresponding test probes will become smaller, the past is 500 μm, and at present it reaches to 150-120 μm or even smaller [11].…”