I am running a software radio application. I need to measure the power of transmitted ofdm signal. The issue is that FCC has regulations of -50dBm/Hz. So I understand that if i need to send a signal at a bandwidth of 1Mhz, the the maximum allowed power -50dBm*10^6 which is 0.01W or 1mw.So i am trying to measure the power at output of my USRP transmitter. I just brought an oscilloscope and measured the sinusoidal signal peak to peak voltage in the oscilloscope. It was 7.2 v peak to peak. I was unsure how to use v^2/R because i don't know the resistance. when i assumed resistance to be 1, I got the power output to be 39dBm. I then checked online and found that you need to measure power spectrum. So that means I need to know power at frequency of transmission. I need a RF power analyser for the same.
How is the power at frequency spectrum related to analog power measured by oscilloscope at the output of antenna?
What should i measure and reduce if i need to keep it within desired FCC regulations? Is the power of the frequency spectrum constant?
Best Answer
The easy solution is to get an RF wattmeter. Those will measure transmit power directly.
Alternately, you can transmit into a \$50\Omega\$ dummy load, measure the RMS voltage, and calculate power as \$P = V^2/50\Omega\$.
This will give you total power. To calculate the spectral density, divide this by the bandwidth of your signal, which you should know since you are making it. The power in this spectrum isn't flat: some smaller areas will have greater spectral density, some will have less. I'm no expert on FCC regulations so I can't say precisely what their rules are. I also can't say precisely how they define "bandwidth".
To get an idea of the spectral density of smaller slices of spectrum within your signal, take the FFT of your transmitted signal, and each bin will give you a relative measure of power in the frequency range covered by that bin. Divide your measured total power by the sum of these bin powers, and you have a scaling factor that relates the unitless power given to the FFT to power in watts.
If the USRP and your software has fixed gain, then this scaling factor will be the same for any transmitted signal. It might be easiest to transmit a simple carrier and calculate the scaling factor that way, then apply it to more complex signals.
Note that your software probably displays the FFT in decibel units; you will want to convert these to linear units to do the math as described.
Your choice of windowing function will affect how the power spreads out between bins. See How does the energy of non-resolved spectral lines get distributed in an FFT?