Abstract: The invention provides a true average, wide dynamic range microwave power sensor using a diode-stack-attenuator diode stack technology. The invention provides a diode stack microwave power sensor which includes an RF signals receiver having wide dynamic power ranges; a low power sensor path connected between the receiver and ground for sensing relatively low power RF input signals. The low power sensor path includes one or more stacked RF diodes in which a number of diode pairs may be coupled to ground through respective capacitors. An impedance network including attenuating resistors R1 and R2 are connected in series between the receiver and ground. A high power sensor path is connected in parallel between the attenuating resistors R1 and R2 and ground for sensing attenuated relatively high power RF input signals.

Abstract: A sampling signal analyzer in which the frequency of an input signal to be measured is initially ascertained, an appropriate sampling frequency is then determined, data needed to reconstruct the wave form of the input signal is acquired, and the input signal wave shape is reconstructed with a calibrated time axis and preferably displayed. The sampling signal analyzer synthesizes a sampler drive signal to enable continuous sampling of the input signal and therefore has the advantage over known data sampling signal measurement instruments that it is not triggered directly in response to the level of the input signal to be measured. Instead, sample timing is based on numerical analysis of the intermediate frequency (IF) signal produced by the sampler. The IF frequency can be an arbitrarily low frequency, which allows digitizing and digital signal processing for aligning measurement data from sweep to sweep with precision.