White Paper: Statistical Process Control Of Wireless Device Manufacturing Requires Production Worthy S-Parameter Measurements

By Carl Scharrer, Keithley Instruments

Whether you are manufacturing RFICs for cell phone modules on III-V wafers or DSPs on a silicon-based technology, predicting final product performance and reliability requires s-parameter measurements at the wafer level to complement the DC data. This is only practical when calibration and deembedding of the s-parameters is automated, along with probe cleaning. Cost of consumables and overall cost of test must also be comparable to the traditional DC process monitor operation. The ideal case is to have a single test operation collect the DC and s-parameter data.