6 Special applications

6.1 Creating a sinewave signal

The AMIQ / WinIQSIM combination was designed for applications in digital communication systems. It is
not recommended for use as a conventional function generator. However, there are situations
sometimes where one needs a simple periodic signal, e.g. for test purposes. It is possible to create such
basic signals with WinIQSIM by applying some little tricks. (All this is done in single carrier system.)

First of all, a periodic rectangular signal is easy to create 22. Use BPSK or QPSK modulation with
baseband filter function rect (baseband impulse Dirac, window rect) and specific patterns as data
source as listed below.

BPSK, pattern 10, symbol rate 1 MHz (Oversampling 32)

--> rectangular signal with frequency 500 kHz on I output.

QPSK, pattern 1011, symbol rate 1 MHz (Oversampling 32)

--> rectangular signal with frequency 500 kHz on I output

QPSK, pattern 1001, symbol rate 1 MHz (Oversampling 32)

--> rectangular signals with frequency 500 kHz on I and Q outputs, in phase.

QPSK, pattern 00011011, symbol rate 1 MHz (Oversampling 32)

--> rectangular signals with frequency 250 kHz on I and Q outputs, opposite phases.

It is also possible to create sinewaves. In this case use CW as modulation type with a baseband filter
function rect (baseband impulse Dirac, window rect). Choose symbol rate and oversampling so that
the resulting sample rate is much bigger than the desired frequency of the sinewave. Then put a
frequency offset on the signal. The offset frequency gives the frequency of the sinewave 23.

To explain: suppose a sinewave of 1 MHz is to be created. Open the single carrier system and
then the modulation settings panel. Set the parameters as seen in Fig. 6-1. The sample rate is
then 40 MHz which gives very good resolution without stressing the DAC due to extremely high clock
rates. Open the offset panel and set the frequency offset to 1 MHz using the assistant function. The
relative phase of the sinewave can be adjusted with the phase offset function in the offset panel. The
phase of the offset oscillation depends on the modulation settings, if one needs a defined starting phase
(e.g. for triggered signals) one must adjust the phase individually for each setup.

22 With the restriction that the correction due to hardware properties may result in some overshootings at the step points, see chapter 2. To avoid overshootings, use your
own ASCII files and AMIQ-K2.
23 A closer look at sections 4.1 and 4.2 will provide the theoretical background of this method.

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Fig. 6-1: Modulation settings and frequency offset for creating sinewave signals. With these settings
the phase offset of 180° produces a cosine (value 1 at T=0) on I output and a sine (value 0
at T=0) on Q output.

Fig. 6-2: Calculated I and Q signals with the settings from fig 6-1.

It is also possible to use the multi carrier system for this application (create two CW carriers).
Furthermore one may use a MSK modulation with data source „all one“ or „all zero“.

If the desired frequency is in a higher range (for example 5-10 MHz) the oversampling with respect to
the period of the sinewave is too small to produce good results. For a 10 MHz signal there are at most
10 sampling points per period and that is not enough, and results in a step function that approximates
the sine or cosine. This signal can also be described as a sum of the desired sinewave and its
harmonics. To get a good analog sine signal, suppress the harmonics with an appropriate hardware
lowpass filter.

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6.2 Creating noise without carriers

Creating a noise without any useful signal may be a little excentric at the first look. However there are
some applications where Gaussian noise is used for amplifier testing. As WinIQSIM is not designed for
creating no signals one has to act trickily again.

The procedure is to create a simple signal, add noise and then compensate the signal by adding
an identical carrier with opposite phase.

To demonstrate this, we will create a white gaussian noise with 30 MHz bandwidth.

First we create the additional signal for compensation. Open a new single carrier setting and
choose BPSK modulation with data source all zero. The modulation settings should be as
shown in Fig. 6-3.

Fig. 6-3: Modulation settings for a BPSK all zero signal.

Calculate the signal and save it for add as BPSK_ALLZERO.IBN. Now create the noise as follows.
Change the data source to all one and leave all modulation settings unchanged. Open the
interferer panel and turn on the noise function. Set the bandwidth to four times the symbol rate
which gives 30 MHz. Eb/N0 should be 0 dB. Activate the add signal function and select
BPSK_ALLZERO.IBN as file. The relative power has to be 0 dB (see Fig. 6-4). Then the BPSK all zero
and all one signals cancel each other and the pure noise part is left.

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Fig. 6-4: Modulation settings, noise and add signal for the „pure noise signal“.

Fig. 6-5: FFT magnitude spectrum of the „pure noise signal“.

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6.3 Noise signals with filter shaping

A more ambitious application is to shape the noise signal with a filter function. Such signals are
sometimes used for amplifier tests. This is an opportunity to use the receiver filter function in
WinIQSIM. As the receiver filter follows the noise generation in the signal path, the noise signal
can be shaped with the filter.

In the examples folder provided with WinIQSIM there are several baseband filters normally used for IS-
95 applications. We will take one of them for designing a receiver filter. Take a look at the
EXAMPLES\IS-95 folder in your WinIQSIM folder. Use the Windows Explorer or a similar tool to copy
the filter file CDMA_BS.IFL and to change the name of the copy into CDMA_BS.IRF. As the baseband
and receiver filter file format is the same, this is the easiest way to get a receiver filter.

Recalculate the BPSK all zero signal with the following modulation settings:

Fig. 6-6: Modulation settings for the BPSK all zero signal, used for the filtered noise signal.

Now recall the noise setting from the last section and change the bandwidth of the noise signal (in the
interferer menu) from 4 to full. This is necessary to approximate the correct CDF function for the
gaussian noise - the ideal noise would have infinite bandwidth. The sequence length is also set to a
much larger value. Complete the settings as shown in Fig. 6-7.

Open the receiver filter panel and choose CDMA_BS.IRF as file. The file was designed for
Oversampling 16 and window length 32 24, so the corresponding modulation settings are done in this
way. Activate the receiver filter function, start calculation and take a coffee break, as calculation will
take a while.

Calculation of the waveform should give a result as shown in Fig. 6-8. Such shaped noise signals are
sometimes used in CDMA amplifier testing instead of real CDMA scenarios because the spectra are
very similar. However, the CDF of a real CDMA signal differs significantly from a Gaussian noise CDF in
most cases.

24 This information is provided in the header of the filter file. See WinIQSIM user manual for further explanation.

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Fig. 6-7: Noise, add signal and modulation settings for the filtered noise signal.

Fig. 6-8: FFT magnitude for the filtered noise signal.

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