EMC Technologies announces OTA testing capabilities

EMC Technologies has announced that it has developed capabilities for over-the-air (OTA) testing of the performance of radio or IoT devices in simulated real-world conditions.

An increasing number of industry standards driven by a rapid growth of wireless IoT and M2M devices require OTA testing for certification.

For testing, a free space environment is set up in an anechoic chamber with the wireless device under test on a low dielectric support capable of rotation in azimuth (theta) and elevation (phi) axes to obtain 3D measurements.

The testing includes:

• Total Radiated Power (TRP) testing, which is three-dimensional characterisation of the transmitter performance by measuring the radiated transmit power of the device at spatial locations around the wireless device under test.
• Total Isotropic Sensitivity (TIS) testing, which is a 3D characterisation of the receiver performance of a device determined by measuring the effective receiver sensitivity by using bit error rate (BER) or frame error rate (FER) at spatial locations surrounding the device.
   

OTA testing can also be used to measure the performance of an antenna alone by measuring transmit or receive gain at spatial locations around the device allowing the measurement of parameters such as average and peak gain, efficiency, VSWR and directivity. It is also useful for generating 3D images of antenna performance.