Signal Capture Triggered by Modulation Boundary Violations
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing test and measurement instruments lack specificity in identifying the exact moment when a cognitive communication system changes its mode of operation due to interference, making it difficult to capture and analyze pre- and post-trigger samples effectively.
Innovation Solution
Utilizing the crossing of a modulation quality degradation threshold as a trigger for acquiring pre- and post-trigger samples, allowing for the analysis of the system's response to interference by capturing only the samples around the boundary violation event.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Measurement precision
If traditional triggering methods are used to capture signal samples, then all samples during the test period must be stored and analyzed, but this results in excessive data storage requirements and analysis complexity
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the continuous signal stream into discrete capture windows centered around trigger events. Instead of storing all samples, only samples within a specific time window around the modulation boundary violation are captured and stored, dramatically reducing data volume while maintaining analysis precision.
Solution Approach 2:
The system performs preliminary analysis of incoming samples to detect modulation boundary violations before committing to full sample storage. By identifying trigger conditions in advance and only capturing samples around these specific events, the system avoids storing unnecessary data while ensuring all relevant events are captured.
2Measurement precision
If continuous monitoring of modulation quality is performed to identify system mode changes, then the system can detect interference responses accurately, but this requires processing and storing large amounts of data
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts only the critical information needed for analysis by capturing samples around modulation boundary violations. Instead of processing and storing all continuous data, the system extracts and stores only the portions of the signal that contain relevant information about system response to interference, simplifying subsequent analysis.
Solution Approach 2:
The system applies different processing quality levels to different portions of the signal. High-precision capture and storage are applied only to samples around trigger events, while other samples receive minimal or no processing. This local quality approach maintains measurement precision where needed while reducing overall system complexity.
Data Source
AI summary
A test and measurement instrument includes an antenna to receive signals containing symbols from a system under test (SUT), one or more analog-to-digital converters (ADC) to sample the signals received from the SUT, a memory to selectively store samples from the ADC, and one or more processors configured to execute code that causes the one or more processors to: receive samples from the ADC, analyze the samples from the ADC to determine whether one or more of the symbols received from the SUT has exceeded an expected modulation boundary for the one or more symbols; identifying a time at which the one or more symbols exceeded the expected modulation boundary as a trigger time; and store samples from a predetermined window of time surrounding the trigger time in the memory.