Power measurement in digital wireless communication systems through parametric spectral estimation

Power measurement in digital wireless communication systems often suffers from poor repeatability, usually accompanied by a low accuracy. To face the problem, the use of parametric spectral estimators is investigated in this paper. In particular, a new method is proposed, which first estimates the power spectral density (PSD) of the analyzed signal through Burg's solution, and then evaluates the power by applying straightforward measurement algorithms to the estimated PSD. The results of a number of experiments, carried out on both laboratory and actual signals peculiar to digital wireless communication systems, assess the efficacy and reliability of the method. Moreover, a comparison of the achieved performance to that offered by an alternative measurement solution, already proposed by the authors and based on nonparametric PSD estimation, shows that the method allows for a significant reduction of measurement time, while exhibiting the same repeatability.