IO-Link Wireless Sensitivity Testing Methods in Reverberation Chambers

Communication reliability is a challenging requirement, which implies the need for over-the-air (OTA) testing. Reverberation chambers (RCs) are widely used for OTA tests in various fields. Due to their properties, such as inherent radio channel emulation or the arbitrary orientation of the equipment under test (EUT) in the test volume, they can be used as advantageous test environments for wireless products in the field of industrial manufacturing automation, such as for the IO-Link Wireless (IOLW) standard. In this paper, the different OTA sensitivity test procedures total isotropic sensitivity (TIS), average fading sensitivity (AFS) and mean channel packet error (MCPE) method, which is based on the fundamental channel model of the wireless standard, are described and evaluated in various variants. A core aspect of the proposal is the impact of the possible use of frequency hopping of the wireless equipment under test. The respective advantages and disadvantages are shown. Overall, TIS proves to be a suitable alternative for IOLW OTA sensitivity testing.