Measuring Power per Hertz of a RF signal

powerRFspectrum analyzer

I am testing my communication application to see it's performance over different frequencies. So I need to measure power at different frequencies of operation. I have been told that my limitation for power to be transmitted is -50dBm/Hz. So I need to see to it that I don't exceed this rating. So i sent a signal at 500Khz bandwidth and checked the output power from the transmitter. I got the value to be around -60dBm. I then changed the bandwidth to 1Mhz to see that maybe the power value will double. But then the only change in power was from -60dBm to -57dBm. I then changed bandwidth to different values to see a correlation. I didn't find any. So how do we go about measuring power per Hz. Seeing the spectrum analyser values if I try to divide power value on spectrum analyser by bandwidth present i think it will be Inaccurate. I would like to know what I am doing wrong and how I can meet the rate of -50dBm/Hz. Any other approach that would help?

Best Answer

While "-50dBm/Hz" can be interpreted as "with 1 Hz RBW, no point exceeds -50dBm", it is generally expected that your signal power is somewhat evenly distributed over the entire bandwidth. Thus, it means that your transmit power maximum is this value times the transmission bandwidth, i.e. for 1 MHz bandwidth, you get +10dBm.

However, that assumes ideal distribution of power, which you hardly ever get, so that is a purely theoretical value. What is practically possible depends to a large extent on the scrambling algorithm you use.

The regulations should also specify how compliance is tested -- typically with an RBW of a few kHz, VBW > RBW, peak detector and a fairly long sweep time.

Measurements with an RBW of 1 Hz are not really useful in compliance tests, because they take ages and see only little of the actual signal power.