This letter proposes an automatic IQ imbalance compensation technique for quadrature modulators by means of spectrum measurement of RF signal using a spectrum analyzer. The analyzer feeds back only magnitude information of the frequency spectrum of the signal. To realize IQ imbalance compensation, the conventional method of steepest descent is modified; the descent direction is empirically determined and a variable step-size is introduced for accelerating convergence. The experimental results for a four-channel transmitter operating at 11 GHz are presented for verification.

A sweep spectrum analyzer has been improved over the years, but the fundamental method has not been changed before the 'Super Sweep' method appeared. The 'Super Sweep' method has been expected to break the limitation of the conventional sweep spectrum analyzer, a limit of the maximum sweep rate which is in inverse proportion to the square of the frequency resolution. The superior performance of the 'Super Sweep' method, however, has not been experimentally proved yet. This paper gives the experimental evaluation on the 'Super Sweep' spectrum analyzer, of which theoretical concepts have already been presented by the authors of this paper. Before giving the experimental results, we give complete analysis for a sweep spectrum analyzer and express the principle of the super-sweep operation with a complete set of equations. We developed an experimental system whose components operated in an optimum condition as the spectrum analyzer. Then we investigated its properties, a peak level reduction and broadening of the frequency resolution of the measured spectrum, by changing the sweep rate. We also confirmed that the experimental system satisfactorily detected the spectrum at least 30 times faster than the conventional method and the sweep rate was in proportion to the bandwidth of the base band signal to be analyzed. We proved that the 'Super Sweep' method broke the restriction of the sweep rate put on a conventional sweep spectrum analyzer.

A highly accurate measurement method of parameters of MZ-type LN optical intensity modulators is presented. In this method, a CW optical signal is input to an optical terminal and small CW RF signal is applied to an electrode of the modulator. Then sideband levels of an output optical signal at different bias points are measured by using optical spectrum analyzer. By using 1st order sideband levels which are measured at two different bias conditions, and using a compensation method to measured levels, we can obtain accurate chirp parameter even when very small power of RF signal is applied to the modulator. In this method, the chirp parameter can be obtained in good accuracy when the input RF voltage is only 3% of the halfwave voltage.

The millimeter-wave (MMW) broadband mixers that are useful for measurement instruments to analyze MMW high data rate signals have been investigated. At first, we propose the specialized RF front-end for analyses of MMW high data rate signals. Next, the required specifications for the 1st mixers of the front-end are estimated, and the design, fabrication, and testing results of Q, V, and W-band monolithic broadband resistive mixers are described. The testing results are compared with performances of the diode mixer designed for V-band. It was found that the resistive mixers have very attractive performances of low conversion loss, good frequency flatness and high third order intercept point (IP3) with low Local (LO) oscillators power. The developed resistive mixers are suitable for the proposed MMW band measurement instruments.

This paper proposes a novel architecture and MMICs for an integrated 2-32 GHz front-end of a spectrum analyzer. The architecture achieves miniaturization by eliminating the large YIG tracking filter and also achieves multi-octave measurement with less than one octave sweep of the first local oscillator. The MMIC's demonstrate ultra-wideband performances with reduced chip sizes by utilizing newly developed FET cells for power combination, multi-order frequency conversion, low leakage variable resistance, and active impedance translation. The MMIC's are a fundamental/harmonic frequency converter, a variable attenuator, a single-pole triple-throw switch, a single-pole double-throw switch, a distributed pre-amplifier, and an active LC lowpass filter. All the MMIC's are smaller than 1 mm2, except the pre-amplifier and the filter.