Low Cost Multisite Testing of Quadruple Band GSM
Transceivers
Larry Zhang*, Dale Heaton, and Hank Largey
Texas Instruments, Inc.
13020 TI BLVD, Dallas, TX 75243, USA
* l-zhang1@ti.com
Abstract
Multisite low cost production testing of a
quadruple band GSM/GPRS RF transceivers
was designed for a low cost mixed signal tester
with new RF sources, frequency mixing circuits,
combiners, splitters, and switches. Special
design considerations for the device under test
load board have reduced cross talk between
parallel sites and signal layout traces. Final
production testing on dual sites have shown that
a low cost test solution as implemented has
higher throughput and better capabilities in
several of the key tests on the device
specification for GSM/GPRS transceivers, such
as the Gaussian Minimum shift keying (GMSK)
modulated spectrum mask test, Synthesizer
frequency lock time and transmitter frequency
settle time tests, as well as receive channel noise
figure tests.
I. Introduction
With the increasing market dominance for
communications devices, cellular phones, PDAs,
and Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs),
and other internet age products [1], the chip
speed, functionality, complexity and system-on-
chip (SOC) integration demand increases as well.
This trend has created challenges not only for
high speed digital and analog circuit design, for
semiconductor CMOS or BICMOS processing
and manufacturing, but also created test and
measurement challenges that require innovative
test techniques and test methodologies. Reducing
the cost to customers and competitor marketing
pressure have made the profit margin shrink.
Simply rely on chip design optimization and
process improvements with shrinking die size
can not meet the time to market pressure and
cost effectiveness. Low cost test solutions and
optimizing test cost is becoming a necessary part
of the profit of operations (PFO) equation.
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Most of the newer generation cellular phones,
PDAs, and broadband communications chips
have demanding video or data applications that
need a lot real time and real world analog
functions and Digital Signal Processing (DSP).
This makes the design and testing [2] more
complicated than a pure digital device.
Integrating microwave and RF functions into
SOC, such as the new CMOS digital radio
processor architecture [3] has made the testing
even more challenging [4-8]. To test these chips
with reasonable test coverage, the test list
becomes longer and also comes the very long
test time and high test cost. Using low cost test
solutions and reducing test time has become
more important than ever to stay ahead of the
competition [4-10]. Low cost testing and higher
throughput will save equipment cost, improve
equipment utilization, and reduce production
cycle time. For mixed signal and RF devices,
the higher test requirement also makes low cost
test solutions very difficult to achieve.
In this paper, we present our low cost multisite
RF test solutions for a quadruple band
GSM/GPRS RF transceivers based on a generic
low cost mixed signal tester. We will present the
methodologies used for testing the device
performance specifications such as the GMSK
modulated spectrum mask. Section II we will
cover the multisite low cost hardware
architecture for RF and mixed signal testing.
Section III, the synthesizer frequency lock time
or transmitter frequency settling time tests. In
Section IV, we will briefly describe the GMSK
spectrum mask testing on our solution. Section
V. Receiver noise figure testing. Then we
summarize our results in section VI.
II. Multisite Hardware for RF and
Mixed Signal Testing
The Texas Instruments, Inc. quadruple band
Global System for Mobile Communications
1
 (GSM) transceiver TRF6151 can be used for
GSM 850MHz, GSM 900MHz, DCS 1800MHz
and PCS 1900 MHz or for GPRS class 12
applications. The receiver is based on a Zero-IF
direct conversion architecture and the transmitter
is based on an integrated modulation loop [13,
14] that contains voltage controlled oscillators
(VCO) and loop filters. The chip is a RF front
end to interface with cell phone analog baseband
and digital baseband chipsets. Transmit
channels are on one side of the chip and are
divided into a high and low bands. Low band
covers the GSM 850 and EGSM, and the high
band covers the DCS and PCS frequencies.
Receiver channels were divided into three
differential inputs for GSMs, DCS, and PCS, see
the device block diagram in figure 1, [13,14].
Figure 1. Quad band GSM/GPRS transceiver
block diagram.
The low cost tester is equipped with high speed
digitizers that can sample at 65MS/s and
arbitrary wave generators that can sample up to
100MS/s for general purpose mixed signal
testing, and 512 digital pins for digital testing.
To add RF capability on this mixed signal tester,
a bench top kind setup is chosen to simplify
assembly and reduce cost. RF sources are used as
the RF inputs for device under test receiver
single tone or two tone testing. They are also
used as local oscillator inputs on the down
conversion path. To reduce the resources needed
for multi site or multi DUT testing, RF
combiners, dividers, and switches are added, see
figure 2.
The device under test (DUT) load board for
multisite is laid out in a stripe and the sites are
aligned from right to left. RF signals are limited
to the top and bottom layers for easy tuning and
signal integrity considerations. Due to handler
requirement, SMA connectors are all installed on
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the bottom side to interface with the RF sources
and tester receiver inputs. To reduce site to site
and signal path to signal path interactions or
cross talk, ground via stitches were used to
isolate all the RF traces. This proved to be very
useful for isolating noise and clock signals from
coupling onto analog and RF signals. This kind
of crosstalk could cause spurs for RF signal or
low signal to noise ratios (SNR) for RF and
baseband mixed signal tests. Surrounding the
SMA signal connectors which were used to
connect to the RF sources or down converters,
we also added extra ground vias to reduce
impedance mismatch induced reflections [15]
which will cause poor VSWRs.
Figure 2. Multisite mixed signal and RF tester
setup block diagram
The impedance matching is performed on the
DIB board. S_parameter measurement for the
assembled load board show that return loss is
about -20dB for both low and high band transmit
channels. A quad site DIB board lay out is also
underway.
To correlate the measurements between testers
and the sites on the load board, repeatability and
reproducibility studies have been performed with
measurement results from 50 golden units as
references. The parameter mean values and
standard deviations of multiple testers and
multiple load boards and both test sites were
correlated before the load board and tester were
put into production use. This step is the so called
GRR step to ensure that we have coherent
2
 measurement results across testers and using
different load boards, as well as on the different
sites of the load board.
The clock system is derived from a low phase
noise crystal reference and using a phase-locked
loop (PLL) to generate the sub clocks for the
mixed signal tests. The device reference clock
phase noise is very critical in achieving the
required device GSM ETSI standards
performance measurements, especially for the
very low noise floor and the very high dynamic
range that are needed for the GMSK modulated
spectrum measurements. Table 1 lists the phase
noise from the low cost tester divided down
clock that is used as the DUT reference clock.
The device specification requires a 26MHz
reference clock with a phase noise of -129
dBc/Hz at 1KHz offset frequency.
Table 1. Tester Clock Phase Noise
Offset Frequency Phase Noise
(Hz) (dBc/Hz)
100 -112
1000 -140
10000 -145
Starting from a straight forward and production
oriented test methodology of using the mixed
signal and RF tester, a very low cost tester
hardware is achieved. The eventual test
throughput during production is as much as
twice of a commercial million dollar RF tester
throughput that TI has used before.
III. Frequency Synthesizer Settle
Time and Transmitter Frequency
Lock Time Measurements
One of the key tests for the GSM transceivers is
to measure the synthesizer frequency lock time.
The design for the quad band transceivers has
automatic and manual calibrations to align the
VCO frequencies to their programmed value.
The time it takes to lock to the target frequency
within a 0.1PPM error averaged over a burst is
usually about ~125us. To measure the frequency
lock time, we capture the down converted
transmitter RF output or the PLL VCO divided
down frequency output, use the transient settling
feature to determine the lock time.
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In the time domain, we can calculate the zero
crossing frequencies over a burst and use the
average zero crossing frequency to calculate the
frequency error against programmed channel
frequency.
Figure 3a. Time domain transmit channel
frequency lock time capture for DUT1.
Figure 3b. Time domain transmit channel
frequency lock time capture for DUT2. Both
captures 3a and 3b are done simultaneously.
Using this method we were able to calculate the
frequency errors to <0.1ppm of the transmit
channel frequency and standard deviations of
~15Hz with 16k samples. With larger number of
capture samples, finer frequency resolution can
be obtained and smaller frequency error can be
achieved.
In the frequency domain, a fast Fourier transform
(FFT) of the captured data should show the
frequency components of the locked frequency
value as a very strong peak, i.e. a clear spectrum
line. Periodic signals will show up as frequency
line spectra after FFT. We can calibrate the
amplitude of the locked frequency bin and
determine the synthesizer locking frequency
value, see figure 4. This method has a little bit
error when the settled frequency is not exactly on
a frequency bin from FFT. Similar to the time
domain method, larger capture sample size will
give smaller frequency resolution and can
measure the lock frequency more accurately.
Due to the initial random PLL locking process
that shown up in the initial captured waveform
3
 segment, the slight non coherent results will
cause some frequency leakage.
Figure 4. A clear spectrum line showing PLL
locked on a programmed frequency.
IV. Transmitter GMSK Modulated
Spectrum Mask Measurement
GSM was originally implemented in Europe.
European Telecommunications Standards
Institute (ETSI) has standardized the test
requirement for the air interface between mobile
station (UE) and base station (BS) via a
communication channel. Most of the GSM test
requirement can be traced to the ETSI 3rd
generation partnership group (3GPP) test
specifications. TRF6151 is targeted for the cell
phone market which is a RF front end of a UE.
In the production test flow, the following RF
tests are covered. On the receiver side, we
measure receiver gain that includes low noise
amplifier (LNA) gain the baseband gain (VGA),
gain and phase mismatch for IQ signals, Input
third order intercept point (IIP3), receiver 1dB
compression, DC offset compensation and
calibration, receiver noise figure, and so on. On
the transmitter side, we measure RF output
power and spur, frequency lock time, spectrum
due to switching transients, and the spectrum due
to modulation, i.e. GMSK spectrum mask test.
GMSK modulation is a continuous phase
modulation and is defined in the ETSI standards
[11] with a BT of 0.3 (bandwidth and symbol
period product) for the Gaussian filter.
Assuming a Dirac pulse exciting a linear filter
with a impulse response of
g(t) = h(t)*rect(t/T)
where
h(t) =2Bexp(-22B2t2/ln2)
and
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rect ( t / T ) = { 1 / T , for |t | < T / 2
0 otherwise
The phase modulated RF carrier signal can be
written as a superposition of amplitude
modulated pulses [12],
t iT
( t ) = i h
i
g ( u ) du , h=0.5
2E
x (t ) = c
cos( 2 f c t + ( t ) + 0 )
T
Here, Ec is the energy per modulating symbol, T
is the period of a symbol, fc is the carrier
frequency, (t) is the information encoding
phase function.
The GMSK modulated spectrum MASK test is
one of the critical tests for GSM. The mask is to
limit the spectrum to a known power spectrum
level without regrowth. At 400 KHz offset, the
spectrum must be better than -60dBc with a 30
KHz resolution band width (RBW). This
measures the nonlinearity and noise performance
of the whole transmit loop, which includes the
IQ modulator, the phase frequency detector, the
charge pump, and the offset mixer.
The procedure of creating the GMSK modulation
is very straight forward. We start with a pseudo
random bit stream, and run through a Gaussian
filter with BT=0.3, then we can generate the IQ
waveforms from the phase trajectory of the bit
stream. The pulse length is limited to 12 symbols
and will cut off the inter symbol interference
(ISI) beyond that. This is shown in figure 5.
4
 test, we choose IF~2-3MHz to cover enough
span for the ETSI spectra mask test frequencies.

Figure 6a. GMSK Spectrum directly captured

Figure 5. IQ waveform generated from a pseudo from the tester for DUT1.
random bit stream.

Using these IQ waveforms, we input to the

device baseband IQ input for the transmit
channels. After the IQ quadrature modulator and
the translation loop, and the transmit channel
PLL and VCO will generate the RF modulated
spectrum. The RF output signal was down
converted into an intermediate frequency about
fIF~2-3 MHz, so that we can see both sides of the
bell shaped spectrum.

There are spurious signals due to the harmonic

mixing of RF fRF and local oscillator LO fLO
input signals from the tester receiver mixers. For
single-tone CW RF and LO signals, we will see
the spurious frequency tones.
nfRF m fLO
Here n and m are integers. Modulated IQ input
waveforms are very much multitone signals. For
multitone RF and LO signals, the spurious-signal
frequencies include not only the primary n fRF
and m fLO harmonic products for each RF tone
combined with each LO tone individually, but
also the cross-modulation products between
multiple RF tones and LO tones. To make sure
that these spurious spectra do not show up in the
measurement, the choice of the IF offset
frequency is critical. Using too small an offset IF
frequency will see the spurious folding into the
useful spectrum that good measurement can not
be made. Using too large an offset frequency will
limit the digitizer frequency over sampling range
for the signal capture. For GSM spectrum mask
Figure 6b. GMSK modulation Spectrum directly
captured from DUT 2. The captures of 6a and 6b
were done in parallel.
The spectra straight from analog capture were
very noisy, see figure 6a and 6b. On most
spectrum analyzers, a continuous trace averaging
is done to smooth out the noise. To speed up test
time and also to keep the spectrum measurement
repeatable and fast enough for production
testing, we used a digital filter to filter out the
measurement noise from the spectrum. Golden
devices were used to correlate with spectrum
analyzers which showed very good correlation,
as shown in figure 7 below.

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 GSM GMSK SPECTRUM
0

Tester
-10
RS
MASK

-20
Relative Magnitude (dBc)

-30

-40

-50

-60

-70

-80
1.73E+06 2.23E+06 2.73E+06 3.23E+06 3.73E+06

Frequency (Hz)

Figure 8. Noise figure repeatability measurement

Figure 7. Digitally filtered GMSK spectrum of GSM900 receive channel with no terminations
mask compared with a Spectrum Analyzer on the input channels for both sites.
measurement.

V. Receiver Noise Figure Testing Using 50 OHM terminations on input channels

during the noise figure test, the noise figure
The GSM Receiver for TRF6151 is based on a measurements become very stable and
Zero-IF direct conversion architecture with an repeatable. Figure 9a and 9b are the results from
integrated LNA and VGA. The overall gain is 10000 runs, both DUTs show very stable noise
about 68dB with 2dB steps. The fully differential figure measurements. Standard deviations of the
LNA input for all three LNA paths, see figure1, noise figure measurements are about 0.1dB for
has reduced the DC offset effect. Additional both DUTs and for all the receiver channels.
design and layout considerations as well as the
DC offset calibration loop that built in the
receiver have helped to minimize the DC offsets.
This makes receiver testing easier due the full
utilization of the dynamic ranges of tester
baseband digitizers. We used very low input
signals to the receivers, with the high receiver
gain, we can still observe the increased noise
power (NP) due to the receiver path noise
contributions.

NF = NP (-174dBm+68dB+10*log(BW)),
Figure 9a. Noise figure repeatability
where NP is the noise power that measured in measurement of all receiver channels from DUT
the receiver baseband channel bandwidth (BW). 1.
NF is the calculated noise figure.

One important draw back of the very high

receiver gain for testing is the high sensitivity
that will magnify any coupled noise or signals
from other on board traces or other receiver idle
channels. Figure 8 shows the noise figure
measurement on the GSM900 receiver channel
when the input channels are not terminated. Very
large standard deviation and no repeatable results
can be made. The results drift away from an
initial noise figure value with increasing repeat Figure 9b. Noise figure repeatability
loop number. measurement of all receiver channels from DUT
2.

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 VI. Summary
This paper has presented a multisite low cost RF
test solution for RFICs based on TRF6151 quad-
band GSM transceiver device. Performance
evaluations from production testing and
characterization results have shown that the low
cost RF tester based on a mixed signal test
solution has the performance that exceed the
ETSI GSM requirement on key device
specification parameters. The production
throughput is almost twice as much as the
commercial million dollar testers that we used in
production before. The straight forward design
and test methodology have realized a very low
cost test solution with good throughput and tester
performance. Careful device load board design
considerations have reduced cross talks between
device test sites and different layout traces which
made multisite testing for RF devices a reality.
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7