Nonlinear measurement dedicated to non periodic pulse train for radar power amplifier characterization

Abstract

A six port mixer based 20GHz nonlinear vector network analyzer (NVNA) dedicated to the characterization of radar power amplifier driven by non periodic pulsed signal is proposed. For the first time a mixer based NVNA is able to measure the fundamental and two harmonics simultaneously while using non periodic radar pulse train allowing measuring time domain waveforms and pulse to pulse measurement within actual radar conditions. The measurement is applied on an S-band 5W GaN on silicon HEMT.