Measurement techniques for the characterization of wireless communication systems in time domain

The market penetration of mobile communications is today over 70% in some European countries. Moreover, wireless can provide an inexpensive solution to transmit data and entertainment signals in home and office environments. The designers of these wireless systems, which generally adopt MSK modulation, are under pressure to both develop new products and reduce manufacturing and test costs. We propose a new technique for testing MSK impulsive RF signal transmitters. It is based on the digital acquisition of a single shot signal and on the data processing to determine the trajectories of the frequency and phase, by means of a time domain analysis. Signals are acquired using a standard digital scope. The theoretical foundation of this technique is given, discussing an actual application. The behavior of the measurement algorithm (robustness, influence of both the digitizer time base jitter and noise on the precision of the measurement) has been evaluated by means of simulation tests