TenTec
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [TenTec] ARRL Phase Noise Data Plotted to 1 MHz

To: Discussion of Ten-Tec Equipment <tentec@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [TenTec] ARRL Phase Noise Data Plotted to 1 MHz
From: Jim Brown <k9yc@audiosystemsgroup.com>
Reply-to: k9yc@arrl.net, Discussion of Ten-Tec Equipment <tentec@contesting.com>
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2014 09:56:24 -0700
List-post: <tentec@contesting.com">mailto:tentec@contesting.com>
On 7/28/2014 9:36 AM, Kim Elmore wrote:
I've been thinking, too. A square wave has an infinite number I'd odd harmonics, not all harmonics. Regardless, it's an excellent way to look at IMD, far better than two tones.

Yup.

What if we modulated the TX with pink noise? That really does have everything in it. Make the pink noise much wider than the expected audio bandwidth. Ideally, the spectrum should be limited to the TX filtered BW. Wouldn't this be nearly the most severe test?

Actually, it's a near ideal test for performance of the rig on SSB. One of the major virtues of pink noise as a test signal is that it roughly approximates the spectrum of both music and speech. In pro audio, we've used "shaped" pink noise for years to specify the performance of loudspeakers, where the shaping is simply bandpass filtering of pink noise for the region where the loudspeakers are intended to operate. I strongly encourage the use of pink noise shaped to a bandwidth of 100 Hz to 5 kHz for this purpose.

I've discussed this with Rob Sherwood several times, and taken him to task for using white noise for that purpose because it does NOT approximate speech. His response is that his intent is to represent clipped and distorted audio. My problem with that is that good audio signal processing should be tailored to the spectra of speech, so using white noise as a test signal will cause that signal processing to misbehave (or behave differently from how it would work with speech).

For those who don't know, pink noise is random noise with equal power per PERCENTAGE bandwidth -- per octave, per third-octave, per sixth-octave, etc. It can be generated by applying a 3dB/octave rolloff to white noise.

73, Jim K9YC

_______________________________________________
TenTec mailing list
TenTec@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/tentec

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>