SSB Phase Noise Evaluation of Analog/IF Signals on Standard Digital ATE

This paper presents a low-cost solution for the evaluation of frequency-domain phase noise characteristics for analog/IF signals. The technique is based on 1-bit signal acquisition with a standard digital channel of an Automated Test Equipment (ATE) and a dedicated post-processing algorithm that permits to reconstruct the time-domain phase fluctuations of the analog/RF signal from the captured binary vector. Single SideBand (SSB) phase noise is then obtained based on FFT applied on the reconstructed phase fluctuations. Simulation results demonstrate a very good agreement between SSB phase noise obtained using the proposed digital method and the conventional analog method on a large range of measurement frequency offset. The digital method also permits spur detection and exhibits similar performance than the conventional method in terms of measurement variability. The technique is also validated through hardware measurements on a practical case study, i.e. SSB phase noise evaluation on the 1.3125 MHz sinusoidal signal delivered by the transceiver of a JN5168 wireless microcontroller.