Large-signal characterization of a mixed-signal SoC receiver for multiband SDR/CR designs

This paper shows a framework to evaluate the nonlinear distortion characteristic of a commercial mixed-signal wideband system-on-chip (SoC) receiver. An approach to obtain fully-synchronized amplitude and phase relationships between the analog input and digital output ports is described. Measurement of AM/AM and AM/PM curves under a sinusoidal excitation are executed over a wide input power range, in order to extract device compression information at different carrier frequencies. As well, metrics for the in-band generated nonlinear distortion are obtained by exciting the mixed-signal SoC device with a two-tone signal, and then calculating the respective third-order intermodulation distortion ratio.