ASN9 - 3rd Harmonic & QSD

Back to my home page

Third Harmonic Sampling The cosine series is made up of a infintie sum of harmonics as shown $\sum _{n=1}^{\infty }{\frac {1}{n}}cos(n\omega t)=cos(\omega t)+{\frac {1}{2}}cos(2\omega t)+{\frac {1}{3}}cos(3\omega t)+{\frac {1}{4}}cos(4\omega t)+\cdots$

The third harmonic is the third term ${\frac {1}{3}}cos(3\omega t)$. The benefit of using the third harmonic in a circuit rather than than the first harmonic is that it creates an oscillation three times as fast. SoftRock -40 software defined radio for example uses third harmonic sampling for faster oscillation. In addition, third harmonic sampling is that it is cheaper to buy a low frequency oscillator and the parts driven by one. The disadvantage is that it results in power loss of -9.54dB.

Further information on Third Harmonic Sampling Soft Rock

Quadrature Sampling

A Quadrature is output signal that is a phase off from the output signal. For example, in a software define radio two signals that are generated from two mixers are phase shifted 90 degrees. One signal is the desired signal and the second is the quadrature signal that is used for quadrature sampling. Further information on Quadrature Sampling SDR-1000 QEX