Could a noise source serve as a substitute of a signal generator to complement RF shield boxes and antennas used in power transmission measurements?
In today's world, with the arrival of IoT, conducted RF power measurements are becoming either physically impractical or impossible to perform, as DUTs are becoming more and more integrated and compact. In order to account for this change, OTA testing techniques have been gaining momentum fast to quantify and analyze devices inside RF test enclosures. Instead of traditionally complementing the DUT placed inside an RF test enclosure with a signal generator, a noise source can be used as a signal source, as a more cost-effective solution. Due to their wideband spectrum which more closely mimics real-life cellular signals encoded through orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), they prove to be a successful alternative providing invaluable benefits over using signal generators, which can only excite a limited set of frequencies.
Our application note discusses the results of OTA measurements with the use of an amplified noise source as an alternative to using a signal generator.