On the use of multi-tone for the measurement of noise power ratio distortion in RF circuits

Abstract

This paper is aimed to propose a noise power ratio (NPR) measurement method with fewer tones than traditionally used. Accurate measurement of NPR distortion is achieved by averaging distortion power measured at the notch frequency excited by multi-tone signals with different random phases. Automatic measurement software is developed to perform all NPR measurement procedures. Measurement results show that the variance is below 0.4dB after averaging 100 NPR distortions excited by 60-tone. Compared to the NPR measurement results obtained by a more-typical 10000-tone stimulus, the measurement error is 0.23dB using only 60-tone signals with average.