Receiver Testing: Noise, Interferers and Channel Simulation

At home, at work, or on the go, our daily activities depend on many types of receivers. Developers and manufacturers test receiving devices to ensure their performance and behavior in the real world. Three key metrics are essential to characterizing receiver performance: sensitivity, selectivity, and susceptibility.

Receivers are designed to achieve certain performance requirements and meet published specifications though often in a test lab environment. To ensure reliable operation, testing with nonideal or impaired signals is essential to characterization and verification of receiver performance and behavior. Complete validation of receiver performance requires accurate and reproducible simulation of real-world conditions that include impairments in the transmitter and in the channel.

This application note answers five key questions: Why do we test receivers? Which parameters do we measure? How do we test receivers? How do we simulate real-world conditions? And What test equipment is required?