Built-in self-test technique for detection of imperfectly connected antenna in OFDM transceivers

Abstract

An OFDM communication transceiver, which is configured to test its connection with an antenna circuit unit, has a receiver chain and an emitting chain. The receiver chain includes a time-to-frequency transform unit and the emitting chain includes a frequency-to-time transform unit. The transceiver further includes means for disconnecting the receiver chain to the antenna circuit unit, means for providing a stimulus as input to the emitting chain, means for reintroducing the signal at the output of the emitting chain as an input of the receiving chain, means for determining a circuit resonance frequency, Fr, and a quality factor, Q, of a transfer function computed from the output of the time-to-frequency transform unit, and means for deciding about the connection of said antenna circuit unit according to the resonance frequency and the quality factor.

Claims

1. A method for testing a connection of an antenna circuit unit to an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing, OFDM, communication transceiver having a receiver chain and an emitting chain, said receiver chain including a time-to-frequency transform unit and said emitting chain including a frequency-to-time transform unit, said method comprising: disconnecting said receiver chain from said antenna circuit unit; providing a stimulus as an input to said emitting chain; reintroducing a signal output by said emitting chain as an input of said receiving chain; determining a resonance frequency, Fr, and a quality factor, Q, of a transfer function computed from an output of said time-to-frequency transform unit; and deciding about the connection of said antenna circuit unit and said OFDM communication transceiver according to said resonance frequency, Fr, and said quality factor, Q.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein said stimulus is provided so that a same complex value is applied to all inputs of said frequency-to-time transform unit.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein a clock of said OFDM communication transceiver is set faster than in normal operations, so as to increase a bandwidth of said signal at an output of said emitting chain.

4. The method according to claim 3, wherein said clock is set five times faster than in the normal operations.

5. The method according to claim 1, wherein said reintroducing of said signal output by said emitting chain as the input of said receiving chain includes down-scaling and mirroring a current output by said emitting chain at the input of said receiving chain.

6. The method according to claim 1, wherein said deciding comprises comparing said resonance frequency, Fr, and said quality factor, Q, to predetermined tolerance intervals.

7. The method according to claim 1, wherein said deciding comprises comparing at least one of said resonance frequency, Fr, and said quality factor, Q, with respective predetermined tolerance intervals.

8. A non-transitory computer readable medium storing a computer program comprising program instructions, the computer program being loadable into a data-processing unit and adapted to cause execution of the method according to claim 1, when the computer program is run by the data-processing unit.

9. An orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing, OFDM, communication transceiver configured to test a connection thereof with an antenna circuit unit, the OFDM communication transceiver comprising: a receiver chain including a time-to-frequency transform unit; an emitting chain including a frequency-to-time transform unit; a switch placed and configured to disconnect said receiver chain from said antenna circuit unit; a current mirror configured to provide a signal output by said emitting chain upon receiving a stimulus, as an input of said time-to-frequency transform unit; a transfer function processing and comparator configured to determine a resonance frequency, Fr, and a quality factor, Q, of a transfer function computed from an output of said time-to-frequency transform unit of the receiver chain; and a decision unit connected to said a transfer function processing and comparator and configured to decide about the connection of said antenna circuit unit and said OFDM communication transceiver according to said resonance frequency, Fr, and said quality factor, Q.

10. The OFDM communication transceiver according to claim 9, wherein said stimulus is provided so that a same complex value is applied to all inputs of said frequency-to-time transform unit.

11. The OFDM communication transceiver according to claim 9, wherein when receiving said stimulus, the receiver chain operates faster than in normal operations, so as to increase a bandwidth of said signal by said emitting chain.

12. The OFDM communication transceiver according to claim 9, wherein said transfer function processing and comparator is configured to compare said resonance frequency, Fr, and said quality factor, Q, to predetermined tolerance intervals.

13. The OFDM communication transceiver according to claim 9, wherein said transfer function processing and comparator is configured to compare at least one of said resonance frequency, Fr, and said quality factor, Q, with respective predetermined tolerance intervals.

14. The OFDM communication transceiver according to claim 11, wherein said clock is five times faster than in the normal operations.

Description

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

(1) FIG. 1 shows a flowchart of a method for testing the connection of an antenna circuit unit to an OFDM communication transceiver, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention;

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF EMBODIMENTS OF THE INVENTION

(2) The invention consists in testing the presence (or good connection) of the antenna circuit from a different point of view than the existing techniques. The self-test is performed by measuring on-chip the quality factor and/or the resonance frequency of the antenna circuit, rather than testing the impedance, the frequency offset and/or the signal strength like the prior art solutions.

(3) As it has been said, with non-soldered contacts, the impedance, the power etc. are not good criteria for checking the quality of the contact.

(4) On the opposite, the applicant has considered that a defective antenna spring contact detunes the resonance of the antenna circuit and/or changes its quality factor.

(5) In addition: Detuning the resonance of the antenna circuit causes a nonlinear gain in the bandwidth of the received and transmitted signals. Under certain conditions (poor network), this drives the circuit to a faulty behavior without changing the overall gain of the signal. Changing the quality factor causes different transient times in the received and transmitted signals. Under certain conditions (very strong or very weak signals), this drives the circuit to a faulty behavior without any systematic change in the load impedance and/or the power of the signal

(6) For these reasons, it is not possible to cover this kind of faulty contacts by applying test methods relying on impedance or power measurements or frequency offset measurement, as the ones mentioned above.

(7) On the other side, when the antenna circuit is perfectly connected, the signal frequencies at the output of the transmitter near the resonance frequency are amplified according to the quality factor of the antenna circuit, and the frequencies away from the resonance frequency are attenuated according to this same quality factor.

(8) This behavior is characterized by a transfer function (frequency response) seen at the output of the transmitter.

(9) According to the invention, it is taken benefit of this behavior by measuring this transfer function in to order to extract The resonance frequency value (Fr), and/or, The quality factor value (Q).

(10) According to an embodiment of the invention, if these two values are within predetermined ranges of values, the antenna circuit is determined as perfectly connected; if no, the antenna circuit is considered as not perfectly connected. In the latter case, actions can be triggered, like warning the end user by actuating the man-machine interface of the transmitter device.

(11) A particular embodiment of the invention is based on the usage of Fourier Transform functions, in order to generate the high quality stimulus and to do the response processing for measuring on-chip the transfer function (frequency response) of the antenna circuit. Once the transfer function is measured on-chip, the resonance frequency and quality factor are calculated from it.

(12) The Fourier transform functions can be implemented in various ways within the transceiver.

(13) OFDM transceivers have already such functions implemented so as to perform the OFDM transmission. The BIST technique according to the invention can therefore be easily applied to OFDM transceiver by re-using their DFT (Discrete Fourier Transform) and IDFT (Inverse Discrete Fourier Transform) units that are already present.

(14) The FIG. 1 illustrates such an OFDM transceiver. It comprises a transmission part (above) and a reception part (below).

(15) The signal S.sub.0 to be transmitted is inserted in a transmission chain made of several chained functional units, namely an encoder unit 1, an interleaver unit 2, a mapper unit 3, a pilot insertion unit 4, a serial-to-parallel transform unit 5, a frequency-to-time transform unit (or Inverse Fourier Transform) 6, a cyclic extension addition unit 7, a windowing 8, a parallel-to-serial transform unit 9, and a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) unit 10. Then the signal to be transmitted is fed in the antenna circuits, which comprise the antenna and matching circuit unit 11.

(16) On the reception part, a similar chain is usually implemented comprising a Analog-to-Digital converter unit 12, a Cyclic extension remover unit 13, a parallel-to-serial transform unit 14, time-to-frequency transform unit (or Fourier Transform, FFT) 15, a Timing and Frequency Synchronization and channel extension unit 21, a Channel equalizer unit 16, a parallel-to-serial unit 17, a de-mapper 18, a bit des-interleaver 19, and a decoder 20. A decoded received signal S.sub.R can then be provided to other circuits of the transceiver.

(17) This functional architecture can be compliant with the state-of-the-art functional architectures and the above-mentioned functional unit will not be described with full details here as the man skilled in the art is knowledgeable about them.

(18) The frequency-to-time transform unit 6 is generally implemented by an inverse Fast Fourier Transform IFFT. This IFFT unit 6 splits the transmission chain into two subparts: A frequency domain, upstream, A time domain, downstream.

(19) Similarly, the time-to-frequency unit 15 is generally implemented by a Fast Fourier Transform FFT. This FFT unit 15 splits the transmission chain into two subparts: A time domain, upstream, A frequency domain, downstream.

(20) According to the invention, a stimulus is generated by providing a signal S.sub.0 in the emitting chain.

(21) The data source can be programmed such that the transmitter generates a wideband test signal by applying the same complex value at all the inputs of the IFFT unit 6. The amplitude of the complex value must be such that the transmitted signal amplitude is 15 dB lower the 1 dB compression point of the transmitter. This is in order to generate a clean stimulus that is pure from nonlinear imperfections. The phase of the complex value can be arbitrarily chosen to be zero.

(22) Taking the WLAN 802.11a/g standard as an example, the stimulus generated has a bandwidth of 20 MHz. This figure is provided by multiplying the length of the Fourier transform (64) by the space between 2 subsequent subcarriers frequencies (312 kHz). This bandwidth is not wide enough. In this example, the stimulus bandwidth must be at least 100 MHz, because the transfer function seen at the output of the emitter (TX) needs to be measured with a span of 100 MHz around the transmitter carrier frequency. It is in this interval where the resonance must be found to calculate the quality factor.

(23) This 100 MHz figure is partly determined by simulation or experiments and allows a good visibility to detect the shift of the frequency resonance. The more visibility is required, the wider should be the frequency span.

(24) For this reason, the digital part of the transceiver can be clocked 5 times faster in frequency that the clocks' frequency in normal operations. This divides by 5 the duration of the time-domain signal at the output of the IFFT unit 6. The bandwidth of the generated stimulus gets then multiplied by 5, so as to become 520 MHz=100 MHz, which satisfies the above mentioned wideband constraint.

(25) An emitter to receiver loop-back is also implemented, between the Tx and Rx interfaces.

(26) This can be done by a current mirror 23 which mirrored a down-scaled version of the Tx current to the Rx input. Scaling down is required because the transmitted signal level is higher than the dynamic range of the Rx input which is the LNA (Low Noise Amplifier) input.

(27) The current mirror 23 can be triggered by a switch 22. The switch 22 is closed when the BIST mode is activated. In normal operation, the switch 22 is open so that the radiated signal is only transmitted over the air by the antenna circuits unit 11 and not reintroduced back to the receiver chain at the Rx interface.

(28) In the BIST mode, the antenna circuits unit 11 is not connected to the Rx interface. The ADC unit 12 has only the reintroduced current as input.

(29) The OFDM receivers comprise thus means for disconnecting the receiver chain to the antenna circuit unit 11, and to reconnect them when the BIST mode is terminated and when the OFDM receiver is switched back to normal operations mode.

(30) Then, a transfer function processing unit 24 takes as input the output of the FFT unit 15 to determine the resonance frequency Fr and the quality factor Q.

(31) Indeed, the frequency-domain N samples at the output of the FFT unit 15 represent an attenuated version (by the scaling down explained above) of the transfer function seen at the output of the Tx. (N being equal to 64 in an 802.11a/g implementation).

(32) According to an embodiment of the invention, the resonance frequency Fr or the quality factor Q can be determined according to well-known techniques accessible to the man skilled in the art. This value can then be fed to a comparison unit 25, which compare them it predetermined tolerance intervals or thresholds. According to the results of this comparison, a decision can be taken by a decision unit 26, regarding whether the antenna circuits unit 11 is well connected or not to the Tx interface.

(33) According to another embodiment of the invention, the resonance frequency Fr and the quality factor Q can be determined according to well-known techniques accessible to the man skilled in the art. These values can then be fed to a comparison unit 25, which compare them it predetermined tolerance intervals or thresholds. According to the results of these comparisons, a decision can be taken by a decision unit 26, regarding whether the antenna circuits unit 11 is well connected or not to the Tx interface.

(34) In the general case, the second embodiment is preferable as it allows detection of a larger range of connection defaults.

(35) The connection default can imply only a parasitic capacitance or parasitic impedance. Such a problem impacts only the resonance frequency fr.

(36) The connection default can imply only a parasitic resistance. This impacts the bandwidth and therefore the quality factor Q which is directly linked to it.

(37) Both connection defaults can be cumulated. This is for instance the case when the antenna is completely disconnected. In such a situation, both the quality factor and the resonance frequency are impacted.

(38) It can be tolerated small variations of the quality factor and/or of the resonance frequency fr around their nominal values. For this reason, the comparison unit 25 is adapted to compare the values previously determined by the transfer function processing unit 24 with predetermined tolerance intervals.

(39) From these comparisons, a decision can be taken about the connection of the antenna with the OFDM receiver.

(40) When both the resonance frequency fr and the quality factor Q are taken into account, a decision can be taken when at least one of them violates its respective tolerance interval. In other words, if the resonance frequency fr or the quality factor is too much shifted from the normal value, it can be decided that the antenna is not well connected.

(41) According to embodiments of the invention, the decision can trigger actions dependent of the extent of this misconnection. For instance, a warning can be displayed to the user of the OFDM transceiver with an indication representative of this extent.

(42) As mentioned above, the computation of the resonance frequency fr and of the quality factor Q can be performed according to well-known techniques.

(43) The resonance frequency fr is the frequency at which the signal is at its maximum. Then lower frequency f1 and higher frequency f2 can be determined as corresponding to signal's energy which is half of the energy of the signal at the resonance frequency fr. They corresponds also to a signal amplitude at 3 dB, compared with the signal amplitude at the resonance frequency fr.

(44) The two frequencies f1, f2 determines a bandwidth f. The quality factor Q is defined as the ratio of the resonance frequency fr by the bandwidth:

(45) $Q=\frac{f_r}{f}$

(46) It should be mentioned that the BIST mechanism should normally be performed after the TX and Rx circuits have passed their production tests. This is because the Tx and Rx circuits must be guaranteed to be functional so that the determination of bad values of the quality factor Q and/or the resonance frequency Fr can be assumed to be caused by the antenna circuits unit 11 and not by the Rx and Tx circuits themselves.

(47) This BIST mechanism presents numerous advantages, including: It is fully on-chip. No external circuits need to be plugged or connected for testing the antenna circuits. It can be even transparent to the end user. It adds only a limited analog overhead that is assumed to be acceptable (current mirror with down-scaling capability and a faster clock for the digital modem). Negligible digital overhead. It can detect faults that can only become apparent when the network is weak. It can then help detecting in advance future potential problems. It is the most accurate method to test the good assembly of the off-chip antenna circuits after being soldered or fixed (by mechanical structures) to the on-chip transceiver circuits. The concept can be generalized to be applied to any OFDM transceiver that contains an on-PCB (printed circuit board) antenna circuit. Very high fault detection can be achieved.

(48) The invention has been described with reference to preferred embodiments. However, many variations are possible within the scope of the invention.