Digital Signal Processor: Power Measurements

The measurement of power is fundamental to transmission quality testing. Power measurements of single tones, such as the milliwatt standard, are used to adjust transmission levels. Multiple-tone power measurements are used in nonlinear distortion testing. Examples of power measurements of band-limited noise are return-loss and Cmessage weighted noise measurements. This paper gives an overview, discusses the theoretical accuracy and precision of digital noise power measurements, and presents some results using the digital signal processor (DSP) A3990 for making power measurements.