TABLE OF CONTENTS Descriptions and examples of traditional RF production testing will be presented in this chapter. Each section throughout this chapter will build on the previous sections. Most of the traditional measurements presented in this chapter are still utilized today to determine the quality of RF SOC devices before they are shipped to the end customers (wireless phone and consumer device manufacturers). Nearly every traditional measurement is in some way connected to the basic "power measurement," so detailed descriptions and definitions of the various forms of power are provided as a foundation to the reader. The remaining traditional RF measurements will be described from the perspective that the reader has a good understanding of making power measurements.
Many of today's RF measurements, whether they are performed on an RF-centric or SOC-centric device, have their roots tied to RF power. As such, it is useful to understand a little of the background and history of how these measurements were developed. For example, spurious tones, harmonics, third-order intercept, power compression, and adjacent channel power are all forms of RF power measurements. Additionally, if the input and output impedance matching of a device under test (DUT) are close to ideal, gain can also be considered a power measurement. In one form or another, it has always been necessary to determine the output power level of RF devices.
