A New Radio Frequency Distortion Dynamic Range Index for Performance Evaluation

Abstract

Dynamic range and spurious-free dynamic range are two of the most critical performance indexes in the field of radio frequency (RF). However, the definitions of both the indexes are ambiguous, and their characterization ability is insufficient, resulting in unfair, and even mutually incompatible, performance evaluation in practice. In this study, a new index named radio frequency distortion dynamic range and its corresponding evaluation method are proposed to achieve a fair and detailed dynamic range evaluation by unifying the existing definitions and improving the performance resolution ability. First, the sliding threshold selection method is introduced to replace the classification-based method of dynamic range definition to characterize more details of the dynamic range. Second, a dynamic range evaluation method of “performance body” is proposed to obtain a more comprehensive evaluation by generalizing the current evaluation from being based on a single condition to the one based on scanning critical conditions. Experiments show that the proposed radio frequency distortion dynamic range index with the proposed evaluation method reduces the ambiguity of dynamic range evaluation and can distinguish the performance difference that the current indexes cannot do.