TABLE OF CONTENTS A basic issue with the testing of transmitter and receiver submodules is that, as they are not yet complete systems with the accompanying firmware and hardware that makes them work as stand-alone units, signals must be artificially injected and extracted to get the DUT to do something. Without a comprehensive and straightforward method of causing signals to flow through the DUT, it is not possible to examine its responses and determine if the DUT is working correctly. Several different options exist for carrying this out.
Note that one requirement is common to all the different modes of injecting signals into and extracting signals from the DUT: its internal registers must be configured with the proper data before it will even begin to function. The configuration interface is most commonly constructed with the aid of general purpose I/O pins driven from a PC, as this allows the register contents to be easily changed by modifying the script or program that configures them via the I/O pins.
One obvious means of driving signals into and out of the DUT is to connect directly to its external connectors and artificially generate the signals necessary. This is shown, for example, in Figure 4.1, where a bit pattern generator (or similar setup using a PC) is used to produce the bit sequence that the baseband device interprets as frame data to be transmitted. Once this is successfully set up, the baseband will drive the...
