A Low Cost Measurement Setup for Measuring ACPR of OFDM Signal

Abstract

In this study a low cost measurement setup is proposed for measuring adjacent channel power ratio (ACPR) of orthogonal frequency division mutliplexing (OFDM) signal. OFDM systems are mostly preffered because of their high data rates and immunity to intersymbol interference. On the other hand OFDM system performance become related to the nonlinear components since it has high peak to average power ratio (PAPR). One of these nonlinear effects is ACPR value. In order to measure ACPR, high cost radio frequency (RF) measurement devices are required. One of these devices is vector signal generator. Vector signal generator is utilized for generating OFDM signal and it is a high cost device. In this study in order to generate OFDM signal, universal software defined radio device (USRP) and "GNU Radio" software are proposed instead of vector signal generator. Experiment results show that RF power amplifier effcets on ACPR value can be investigated by using proposed setup.