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Jessy Cavazos
5G Industry Solutions Marketing
Industry Insights
mmWave 5G OTA Measurements Fundamentals
2020-08-27 | 6 min read
5G millimeter-wave (mmWave) devices bring over-the-air (OTA) challenges to design and test engineers across the device workflow. OTA is the only viable approach for all radio test cases at mmWave frequencies.
OTA replaces the cable of a connected test setup with an over-the-air link. The device under test (DUT) uses this link to communicate directly to an antenna in the test setup.
Using an anechoic chamber to manage the OTA connection helps ensure a well-behaved RF environment. The chamber includes the following key components:
Electromagnetic field behavior and characteristics vary depending on the distance from the antenna. You need to consider the characteristics of the region in which you are making measurements carefully:
Figure 1. Wave propagation diagram
Defining an OTA measurement setup also requires considering several technical aspects including range length and DUT configuration.
Range length is the distance between the probe and your DUT. It must be optimized to enable stable and accurate measurements. If you are measuring in the far-field region, the range length needs to be greater than 𝑅=2𝐷2/λ. Using this formula has a direct impact on the size of the chamber. The far field at 28 GHz is about 50 cm for a 5-cm antenna, 190 cm for a 10-cm module, and over 4 m for a 15-cm device.
A DUT can range from being a radiating element to an entire device. In handsets, the DUT includes the mechanical size of the antenna and the coupling to the radiating elements. There are three DUT antenna configurations defined by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP):
Figure 2. 3GPP DUT configurations
In addition to range length and DUT configuration, you also need to keep the following concepts in mind:
Figure 3. CATR concept
mmWave 5G is making OTA testing much more mainstream in the wireless communications industry. The challenges of these types of measurements are new to much of the commercial segment, but not to Keysight. For more information on Keysight 5G OTA chambers, click here.
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