Characterization of in-band distortion in RF front-ends using multi-sine excitation

Multi-sine signals are useful for approximating communication signals when analyzing distortion generated by nonlinear circuits. In this work the correlated and uncorrelated components of distortion are derived using multi-sine signals with random phases. Distortion analysis of two-tone and four-tone random phase signals demonstrates the in-band distortion characteristics of multi-tone signals. Simulated in-band distortion for a sixteen-tone random phase signal is verified against measured in-band distortion characteristics of a CDMA forward link signal.