This chapter will discuss the many aspects of production testing for wireless SOC devices. Highly integrated wireless SOC devices must supplement the traditional parasitic testing (power, phase noise, S-parameters, ACPR, and so forth) normally accompanying individual building blocks (amplifiers, mixers, filters, and the like) with functional testing of the complete SOC chains (TX, RX). Functional testing of a wireless SOC tests entire chains of the device as a functional block and more closely approximates how the device will be used in the real world. The specific application (e.g., cellular, WLAN, Bluetooth) dictates the functionality that is required of the SOC. As such, it is necessary to have a good understanding of the particular application that the SOC is providing in order to understand the functional testing requirements fully.

For example, a Bluetooth SOC and a WLAN application are two completely different applications targeting different markets. They have vastly varying designs, specifications, and functions. Therefore, while parametric testing of the individual building blocks for cellular, WLAN, or Bluetooth SOC devices can be quite similar, functional testing of a Bluetooth SOC can require vastly different testing versus functionally testing a WLAN or cellular SOC. Thus, it is important to understand the intended function of the SOC.

The various integration levels of SOC devices are described to help the reader break the SOC into the various functional blocks when examining block diagrams of wireless SOC devices. Wireless Bluetooth SOCs are examined in detail, beginning with an introduction to the Bluetooth standard.