System development and experimental validation of a long‐range VNA‐based channel sounder.

In a wireless communication system, the radio propagation channel is a complicated component to characterise. Channel sounding equipment thus has to meet specific criteria to extract the desired channel parameters. In this study, the authors outline the development and validation of a vector network analyser (VNA) based channel sounder for the frequency range from 1 to 50 GHz using radio‐over‐fibre techniques. Three methods of de‐embedding phase errors due to hardware impairments are demonstrated and validated via back‐to‐back measurements. The bidirectional scheme utilising optical circulators is shown to have a superior performance over the two‐branch unidirectional and the two‐branch bidirectional schemes. Therefore, the bidirectional scheme utilising optical circulators is proposed to achieve a long‐range ultra‐channel sounder based on the VNA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]