Power Estimate Accuracy

[Paul Anderson]

Hello LVians - does anybody have any experience with obtaining
"accurate" estimates of signal power within a certain frequency band for
real-world signals?

I'm measuring telecom (T1 & E1) signals, and am not having much success
in obtaining accurate estimates of "power within a certain band of
frequencies". My spectrum gets "smeared" by something (don't know yet),
and I have trouble then calculating exactly what the power is. I use
things like "Auto Power Spectrum", "Power and "Frequency Estimate" and
"Time Domain Window" to perform the calculations.

thanks in advance, paul

Paul Anderson
Verilink Corporation

[Abhay_Samant]

You can measure the signal power within a certain frequency band using the Power In Band (aka Band Power) measurement. This measurement operates on the power spectrum, takes the center frequency and the span of the band that you are interested in, and computes the signal power in that band.

We are in the process of working on a toolset that contains this measurement. Please contact me at abhay.samant@ni.com, if you are interested in evaluating a beta copy of this toolset.