Monday, August 10, 2009

915MHz signal with a 100MHz A/D

I've been using a Radiotronix DP-1205 RF transceiver that operates in the 915MHz unlicensed ISM band. The power level, operating frequency, FM deviation, etc., are set using the SPI serial interface. So I decided to see if my MHZ100Q A/D PCB could see the signal. I bypassed the antialiasing filter and associated buffer, and then coupled the transceiver signal to the input.
It Works! The signal is low amplitude (less than 10% of full scale), and there are a lot of spurs 20dB down or so, but the carrier is clearly visible. The 902 to 928 MHz band is being undersampled at 100 MHZ so it shows up at 2 to 28 MHz in the digitized signal (in full compliance with Nyquist's rules).
The A/D is only spec'ed to 550 MHz, so I wouldn't trust the signal and distortion levels, but it's definitely a usable signal.
More details on the MHZ100Q project site at Source Forge.

No comments: