NI Spectral Measurements Toolkit User Guide 30 ni.com
Spectrum scaling options are combinations of the following options:
• RMS or peak—An FFT returns an amplitude spectrum scaled such
that a frequency bin represents the RMS value of a sine wave at that
frequency. A bin can also represent the peak value if you scale the
spectrum by .
• Amplitude or power—The power spectrum is the squared magnitude
of the amplitude spectrum. For example, if an amplitude spectrum has
units of V
rms
, its power spectrum units are in V
2
rms
. If you divide by the
impedance, you get W
2
rms
.
• Spectrum or spectral density—The PSD is the power spectrum
divided by the frequency resolution. PSD units are usually V
2
rms
/Hz or
W
2
rms
/Hz. You can also obtain an amplitude spectral density by
choosing units such as .
Connect the spectral info output parameter of the Zoom FFT VIs to the
spectral info input parameter of the SMT Spectrum Unit Conversion VI.
This parameter includes the following subparameters:
• window determines the ENBW of the window you use. The ENBW
affects the spectral density calculations because of the spectral leakage
effect of windowing in the frequency domain.
• The ratio of window size and FFT size is a value the SMT Spectrum
Unit Conversion VI uses to correct any difference between the number
of frequency bins in the spectrum and the number of points in the
time-domain signal. The correction ensures that you can preserve
the energy of the original signal. For example, if you zero-pad a
time-domain signal of length N, or window size N, to a length of 2N,
the result contains twice as much energy in the 2N frequency bins as is
in the time-domain signal. Given the two sizes, you can compensate for
this effect.
For example, you can use the SMT Spectrum Unit Conversion VI to
perform PSD measurements with units dBm/Hz on a signal. Set units to
dBm, peak scaling to RMS, psd? to
TRUE, and impedance to the system
impedance. PSD is calculated using the following formula:
2
V
rms
Hz()⁄
dBm
rms
2
Hz
------------
⎝⎠
⎛⎞
10 10 XVrms[]()
2
Window size
FFT size
--------------------------------
×
1000
mW
W
---------
ENBW df Hz[]impedance Ω[]××
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
×
⎝⎠
⎜⎟
⎜⎟
⎜⎟
⎛⎞
log×=