Category Archives: Power Meter

RF Power Meter – Part 5 (Mobile Application)

Mobile Power Meter Application So in this article, we’re going to switch from the power meter itself to the mobile application that serves as the remote display.   The power meter application is a cross-platform application for Android, IOS, MacOS, and Windows.  The application starts up by searching for any and all power meters that are […]

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RF Power Meter – Part 4 (Calibration)

Background Welcome to Part 4 in the RF Power meter series. Today it’s all about calibration. In the original design of the RF Power Meter, I had planned on using slope and intercept values from the datasheet to calculate the displayed RF level.  The approach was simple to implement, however, the slope of the graph tended […]

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RF Power Meter – Part 3 (BLE Contamination)

Bluetooth LE Measurement Contamination I know what you’re thinking… is it a really a good idea to have a Bluetooth LE module paired with an RF power meter?  Wouldn’t the integrity of the RF measurement be compromised by the Bluetooth LE module?   It turns out the answer is no, well no in the sense […]

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RF Power Meter – Part 2 (Hardware)

Hardware Description and Schematics The RF Power meter is made up of the Linear Technologies LT5538 Power Detector and the Nordic Semiconductor nRF51822 Bluetooth SOC module. Linear Technologies LT5538 The Nordic Semiconductor nRF51822 SOC module or more affectionately the RFduino RFD22301 is used as the microcontroller and Bluetooth LE module. The RF power detector module […]

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RF Power Meter- Part 1 (Introduction)

Introduction This is a multi-part series on the RF power meter I developed for insertion loss testing.  While this series will get into the details this article starts with the why.  In future articles, we’ll cover the hardware, schematics, battery options, Bluetooth contamination of measurements, calibration and mobile software. The What and Why Insertion loss […]

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