Testing Wi-Fi Connectivity in Commercial Devices on the Production Line

Wi-Fi is becoming quite ubiquitous. In smartphone and tablet devices, it’s increasingly used as an avenue for offloading 3G and 4G data use when the availability of mobile signals is low.

It’s also fast finding new applications in the automotive industry—in everything from in-car entertainment to sophisticated navigation systems—so much so, that Ford expects to have Wi-Fi in 80% of its cars by 2015.

All of this amounts to a great deal of pressure on manufacturers, to ensure that their functional, production line testing of Wi-Fi enabled products is as accurate and efficient as possible.

The limitations of with testing with a Wi-Fi router

Simply turning a Wi-Fi -enabled device on as comes off the production line, and granting it a pass or fail based on its ability to see a router signal, is both and inadequate and inefficient as a test of functionality.

It’s likely the router only adheres to one wireless standard, when there are many that need to be tested. Moreover, the time spent testing in this way quickly adds up when you’re producing 200,000 devices a day.

Many products that today include Wi-Fi connectivity will also offer support for a range of other wireless signals. For manufacturers needing to deliver functional testing of Wi-Fi connectivity alongside NFC, Bluetooth, and FM, the effect on the speed of the production line can be immense.

Efficient, reliable production testing

It’s to meet these challenges that we’ve built Wi-Fi testing into our new GSS5300 Multi-Radio Wireless Connectivity Tester.

The GSS5300 accelerates functional Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and NFC connectivity tests, by allowing multiple wireless signals and multiple devices to be tested simultaneously. It’s also easy to calibrate the GSS5300 to test devices under multiple, varied conditions.

Eliminating the time and accuracy issues associated with connecting each device under test to a ‘live’ signal from a Wi-Fi router, FM radio transmitter or NFC terminal means fast, accurate, repeatable testing. All without the cost or complexity of a high-end, parametric test unit designed for R&D use.

Find Out More

You can learn more here about exactly how the GSS5300 supports the rapid production of commercial Wi-Fi-enabled devices—from cars to health monitors. If you’ve any questions about testing Wi-Fi for specific applications, please don’t hesitate to contact us.