The Designer's Guide Community Forum

The Designer's Guide Community Forum
https://designers-guide.org/forum/YaBB.pl
Design >> RF Design >> RMS power detector - singal independent demodulation???
https://designers-guide.org/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1528274374

Message started by Horror Vacui on Jun 6^th, 2018, 1:39am

Title: RMS power detector - singal independent demodulation???
Post by Horror Vacui on Jun 6^th, 2018, 1:39am

I have read the following sentence in [1], what I do not agree with and I would like to know what do I miss in interpretation/context or in technical knowledge:
"A RMS power detection is more useful than peak power detection because it can measure a modulated signal independent of its waveform shape."

Modulation schemes in general rely on amplitude, phase or frequency changes vs time. I do not see how is the sentence above true. Even a peak detector can follow the amplitude changes, while no power/peak detector can detect change in phase or frequency.

I tend to interpret "measure" as demodulate, since anything can be measured with a measurement block, and the sentence would not convey information.

What do you think about it? Do you agree with the citation?

[1] U. R. Pfeiffer and D. Goren, “A 20 dBm fully-integrated 60 GHz SiGe power amplifier with automatic level control,” IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits, vol. 42, no. 7, pp. 1455–1463, 2007.