Large Manufacturer of Cellular Base Station Radios uses Boonton 4542 Peak Power and CCDF Capability to Improve Amplifier Testing Accuracy and Reduce Cost

Customer Success Story:

Global OEM Manufacturer of Cellular Base Station Radios utilizes the CCDF features of the Boonton 4542 Peak Power meter to improve RF amplifier test accuracy and minimizes costs of test equipment.

Previous Situation:

Testing Cellular Base Station Radios requires RF amplifier tuning including pre-distortion. These amplifiers are tuned for maximum performance and linearization, but great care has to be taken not to clip the signal. The traditional method was performed with expensive ($90k) spectrum analyzers. They had the capability to measure CCDF but provided only one channel. This limited their capability to just measure the output signal of the amplifier. The procedure required complicated test fixtures to normalize for modulation, demodulation and correction factors. Each test engineer had an instrument at his desk.

Problem or Challenge and its Impact:

Increased business demanded extension of their production capacity, so additional test stations were needed. Two of them would be used for incoming inspection.

Alternative Approaches to Solve/Improve:

Boonton’s 4542 peak power meters can perform the same CCDF measurements as the customer’s spectrum analyzers but the 4540 comes with two channels, which allows to measure both, input and output simultaneously. The cumbersome test procedure and normalization would no longer be required, but additional immediate information about amplifier gain and linearity would be available.

Solution Implemented/Action Taken:

Two Boonton 4542 Peak Power Meters each equipped with two 57006 sensors, allowed them to tune the amplifiers much more conveniently and much faster than with their spectrum analyzers. The 57006 peak power sensors are not only very fast, but offer also a very high dynamic measurement range.

Results/Impact:

Customer’s goals were to increase product quality by using dual channel test devices and reduce the amplifier tune and test time. The Boonton 4542 peak power analyzers with two 57006 sensors made this possible, resulting in improved measurement accuracy, and a significant reduction of test time; all achieved at dramatically lower costs.