Andrew Beckett
Senior Fellow
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Life, don't talk to me about Life...
Posts: 1742
Bracknell, UK
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It is single sideband noise figure. Recent versions (later IC446 hotfix versions, and IC50XX versions) now allow you to plot NFieee (IEEE single sideband noise figure), and NFdsb (double sideband noise figure) as well.
The reference sideband is the sideband where your input signal is. This is so that it can figure out the signal conversion gain from the input to the output (remember that noise factor represents the ratio of signal/noise at the input to signal/noise at the output). In fact spectre computes it by finding the ratio of total output noise (less the load noise), to the contribution of the input noise source at the output - the signal cancels out in the calculation. However, it still needs to know which conversion gain to use.
So, the input frequency would be found by:
inpFreq = outFreq + refSideBand*PSSfund
so if you're looking at noise at 100Mhz, and have a PSSfund of 1GHz, then refSideBand of -1 means that the desired input frequency is -900MHz. If it is 1, then the desired input frequency would be 1100MHz. If it is 0, then there is no frequency conversion between input and output, i.e. 100MHz input frequency.
Later versions also allow you to select the frequency from a listbox rather than having to work out and type in the reference sideband.
Note that if you have multiple large signal inputs, then it is unlikely to be +/- 1 any more since this is all in relation to the PSS fundamental; +/- 1 works if the PSS fundamental is your LO frequency.
Regards,
Andrew.
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