Title
Pilot tone aided measurements to extend the bandwidth of radio frequency applications
Date Issued
01 August 2016
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Publisher(s)
Elsevier B.V.
Abstract
A technique to extend the effective measurement bandwidth of a non-coherent vector receiver is presented. This bandwidth extension technique relies on the use of a pilot signal (known a priori), which is added on the signal of interest and is measured in a single receiver. Compared to other bandwidth extension techniques referred as stitching techniques, the proposed approach avoids error propagation in the measurement bandwidth and simultaneously enables the measurement of signals that do not contain energy in certain spectral bands. The pilot signal is created in digital stages, which tackles to large extent the requirement of the a priori knowledge of this signal. Further, the pilot signal is designed to minimize estimation errors of the proposed technique, providing enhanced performance. It is analytically shown that the error incurred by the proposed method is always lower than the error from the measurement noise. Measurement results show the method functionality with an error in the range of -50 dB of the signal measured. Finally, the usefulness of the proposed technique is illustrated by measuring the input and output of an amplifier with dynamic range in excess of 80 dB over 290 MHz using an 18 MHz bandwidth receiver. This measurement could not have been performed by existing stitching techniques.
Start page
534
End page
541
Volume
90
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Ingeniería de sistemas y comunicaciones
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-84969632452
Source
Measurement: Journal of the International Measurement Confederation
Resource of which it is part
Measurement: Journal of the International Measurement Confederation
ISSN of the container
02632241
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus