The impact of long-term memory effects on diode power probes

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of long term-memory effects on power measurements with diode power probes. We show that a power probe calibrated with a single-tone sinusoidal excitation can provide erroneous values when used with modulated signals. This fact is ascribed to the low-frequency response imposed by the power probe baseband circuit. This hypothesis is first theoretically demonstrated by use of a Volterra series, and then validated by simulations and measurements using a diode power probe.