About the measurement
R&S®FSW-K17
18User Manual 1173.9405.02 ─ 31
3 About the measurement
Frequency delay in transmitted signals
All frequency components of a signal are delayed when passed through a device such
as an amplifier, a loudspeaker, or propagated through space or a medium, such as air.
This signal delay will be different for the various frequencies unless the device has the
property of being linear phase. The delay variation means that signals consisting of
multiple frequency components will suffer distortion because these components are not
delayed by the same amount of time at the output of the device. This changes the
shape of the signal in addition to any constant delay, which can result in a signal that
no longer matches the receiver filter, which in turn results in degraded Signal to Noise
Ratio (SNR) or Bit Error Rate (BER).
Group delay as a characterization of transmission components
The delay of all frequencies together is referred to as the group delay and can be used
to characterize the quality of transmission for such components. Group delay is also a
measure of how long it takes for a signal's information to propagate through a channel
or device under test.
Since digital modulation schemes in which the frequency plays an important role are
very common, the group delay is of special interest to all manufacturers or testers of
transmission components, as well as frequency converters. Satellite transponders, for
example, need to be characterized by the phase transmission in addition to the ampli-
tude transmission. Both values can be determined precisely and easily with the
R&S FSW Multi-Carrier "Group Delay" application.
The Multi-Carrier Group Delay measurement method
The R&S FSW Multi-Carrier "Group Delay" application evaluates an input signal provi-
ded by a signal generator. After a preliminary reference measurement of this signal
without the device under test, the same signal is evaluated with the device subse-
quently. Instead of evaluating the timing of the signals, the phase shift and "magnitude"
response of multiple carriers across frequency is measured. A baseband signal con-
sisting of several unmodulated carriers with a fixed step size is used as an input signal,
allowing for a very quick wideband measurement. By measuring the "phase differen-
ces" between the two signals at the input and at the output, the application calculates
the relative phase between output and input.
However, the phase of the carriers at the input to the DUT does not actually have to be
measured. Instead, the results are normalized. That way, no reference path or connec-
tion is needed between the input and the output of the DUT. A reference mixer in the
signal generator provides a "phase reference" at the IF frequency. Thus, a constant
delay factor is eliminated and the group delay is calculated relative to the reference
signal.
If an external trigger is used, the absolute group delay can also be calculated. Absolute
group delay is of interest for instance to equalize the delay of two channels, character-
ize cables and design quadrature FM demodulators.