Mass Production Testing

The purpose of mass production testing is to ensure that the functions and performance of the whole product meet standards, so it is necessary to fully check the functions and performance of each product during this stage. Depending on the product characteristics, the schemes for mass production testing can be slightly different. For RF communication products, it is necessary to ensure that RF performance meets standards and each component functions as expected. This normally involves RF performance test, power consumption test, and functional test of various peripherals.

For wireless products, common mass production testing includes electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) test, RF performance test, production compliance test, safety test, SAR (Specific Absorption Rate) test, etc., among which the RF performance test is of high importance, thus requiring a large amount of testing. It is conducted to verify whether the RF performance of a product meets the designated requirements and relevant standards. It involves two sets of indicators: Transmitter (TX) and Receiver (RX) characteristics.

This section mainly introduces the mass production testing schemes for products with Espressif Wi-Fi / Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) modules and chips, which can be used as a reference for designing testing schemes for similar products. For detailed information, please refer to Espressif Production Testing Guide on our official website. Generally, there are two production testing schemes available for RF performance test: RF General-purpose Tester Scheme (widely adopted in the industry) and Signal Board Scheme (designed by Espressif).

RF General-purpose Tester Scheme

The tester scheme is widely used for the production testing of Wi-Fi / BLE products. Espressif provides the necessary serial port commands and firmware, so the customers can easily use this scheme for testing. The testing steps are demonstrated in Figure 14.3.

Signal Board Scheme

The signal board scheme is specially designed by Espressif, which can effectively test the RF performance of the mass-produced Wi-Fi / BLE products, thus guaranteeing the RF quality. This scheme features low cost of hardware and easy environment setup for factories.

As demonstrated in Figure 14.4, the signal board can be used as a standard device to communicate with the DUT (Device Under Test) and test it by analyzing the communication data. Hardware connection for signal board scheme is demonstrated in Figure 14.5.