Comb data generation

Abstract

A sine wave oscillator provides an input signal to a step-recovery diode (SRD). The SRD produces a wideband series of harmonics of the frequency of the sine wave oscillator that are represented as "lines" in a power r.f. frequency plot. The output of the SRD is supplied to one or more bandpass filters or lowpass filters which provide selection windows so that only a specified number of harmonic lines are passed within a selection window. These specified harmonic lines are then coupled to one or more high speed input switches which are coupled to one or more high speed selection switches. The high speed selection switches are each coupled to a separate bandpass filter that is tuned to a different bandpass frequency range. Each bandpass filter corresponds to one or to several adjacent lines of the selection windows. The selection switches are connected so that various ones of them may be turned on to form either selective parallel or serial combinations, or even simultaneous parallel/serial compositions, of the frequency line components under the control of a digital switch controller. The output of the bandpass channel filters are coupled to a broadband output r.f. amplifier so chat transmission of the desired output signal may be made from the amplifier either over a wire or by wireless transmission. An amplitude level controller for limiting the amplitudes of selected frequency lines and a phase modulator for phase-modulating the output frequency line components are optional features.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.