What does 'maximum operating power' means in the X410 specification?

Updated Jan 8, 2025

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Issue Details

Background:

I'm reading the X410 specification, and I found one particular value under RF -> Receiver -> Maximum input power, damage level which is not easy to understand:

the first and second row are understandable as they mean

<= 3 GHz, the input power should be less than +14 dBm

\>3GHz, the input power should be less than + 17 dBm; + 20 dBm for up to 5 minutes

but I'm not sure about what the third row means here.

Question:

What's the 0 dBm Maximum operating power means?

Solution

The first two are the damage levels - so nothing breaks if you accidentally input a power below that level.

The "Maximum operating power" is the input power you can actually use without saturation within the device. So for any frequency, we will have a gain setting that allows a 0 dBm input tone to reach the ADC without clipping. There are frequencies that allow a higher input power at the lowest gain values, but that's something we don't specify.

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