AWESOME and HUMSNIFFER Calibration

Ryan Said
November 5, 2008

Amplitude

The total magnetic ux through a loop is

~ d~s
B

(1)

S
(Recall that the induced voltage is given by Faraday's law:)

Vind =
The denition of self inductance is

dt

I
= BN A.

(2)

L=
For a loop antenna with N windings and area A,

L=
If we know the current

Ical

BN A
I

L, N ,

and

A,

we can calculate

in series with the antenna. From (4), this gives

If we record data when

Bcal .

(4)

in Teslas. Our preamp cards contain a calibration circuit that injects

Bcal =
eld

So (3) becomes

through the antenna, and given antenna values

the incident magnetic eld strength

a known current

(3)

Ical

LIcal
NA

(5)

is injected, we can then relate the measured amplitude

acal

to the magnetic

The calibration number, the factor that converts measured amplitudes to the incident magnetic

Bcal
acal . The next two subsections describe the calibration circuits in the HUMSNIFFER
and AWESOME preamps.
eld strength, is simply

1.1

HUMSNIFFER calibration circuit

The HUMSNIFFER box contains a calibration circuit which generates a 1V peak-to-peak square wave from
the Test Point to ground. This signal passes through a voltage divider to become
we can readily nd

Ical = Vcal /Rcal .

Vcal .

Using

Rcal = 10k,

The voltage divider scales the (one-sided) voltage at the Cal test point

by 22.1/(22.1+49900).

1/5000 seconds, so the fundamental harmonic is at 5 kHz with

22.1
1V 4
=
280V
, or 200V rms. There are odd harmonics at 15, 25, 35 kHz ... with
22.1+49900 2
amplitudes scaled by 1/3, 1/5, 1/7, ... with respect to the fundamental.
The square wave has a period of

Vcal =

1.2

AWESOME calibration circuit

The AWESOME preamp card contains a microprocessor which generates a 10-bit psuedo-random number
sequence (PRNS). The bit width is

T2 = 1023 T1

T1 = 1/256e3

seconds, and the sequence repeats after 1023 bits, or after

seconds. Measuring the voltage at +Cal Test Point with respect to ground, a 1 bit is

represented by a positive voltage of

e
A

= 1V, and a 0 bit is represented by 0 volts (so 1V peak-to-peak

w.r.t. ground). If the dierential voltage between the + and - Cal Test points is measured, the PRNS
should alternate between

1V ,

with a voltage swing of

e=
2A

2V.

As with the HUMSNIFFER calibration circuit, this signal passes through a voltage divider to become

Vcal .

Again we have

Rcal = 10k,

and we nd

Ical = Vcal /Rcal .

The voltage divider scales the (one-sided)

voltage at +Cal Test Point by 100/(100+2200).

e*100/(100+2200)
Vcal amplitude of A = A

The PRNS generates tones every 1/T2=250.244 Hz. Given a one-sided

= 0.0434V of the PRNS, we wish to determine the amplitude of each tone.

T1 and height A convolved with a sequence

T1 with weights alternating between 0 and 1 according to the PRNS. The
delta train sequence repeats every 1023 T1 seconds. The Fourier Transform will therefore be a sinc function
The PRNS

Vcal

can be thought of as a square pulse of width

of delta functions each spaced by

1
T2 . Noting that the Fourier Transform of a square pulse
centered at 0 with width T1 is proportional to sinc(f T1 ) and that the frequency domain is sampled every
1
, we nd that the Fourier Series of the PRNS x(t) is given by
df = T12 = 1023T
1
multiplied by a delta train with impulses every


F.S.{x(t)}[k] fk =

A
2

X
2 sinc

k
1023

k=0
k 6= 0

where the DC component was determined by direct integration, and

amplitude of the harmonic at

k/(1023 T1 ) = k 250.244
1
T

and noting that the PRNS takes a

+A

Z
T

X sinc(k/1023)

is the one-sided

Hz. Using Parseval's theorem:

|f (t)|2 dt =

(6)

|fk |2

(7)

k=

value half of the time (and 0 elsewhere), we have

A2
A2
=
+
2
4

X
2

2 X

sinc

k6=0

k
1023


(8)

Using

k=

sinc2 (kb) = 1b ,

b1

(9)

(which is readily derived by applying Parseval's theorem to the inverse Fourier Series of

sinc(kb)),

and

therefore

k6=0

sinc2 (kb) =

1
b

1,

b1

(10)

we have

 2  2
A
X
=
(1023 1)
2
2

(11)

1V 100 = 1.36mV , or X = 1.36/ 2 = .96mV 1mV

1022 2300
rms. Note that there will be a small roll-o in amplitude between DC and the Nyquist frequency due to the
Hence the one-sided amplitude of each tone is

X=

sinc envelope of the Fourier series. At 50 kHz, the amplitude of each tone is lower by

0.55dB

20log10 (sinc(50e3/256e3)) =

with respect to tones near DC.

NOTE: in Calibrate_VLF,

e was
A

mistakenly set to .5 V (the dierential voltage between

Points was assumed to be 1V), yielding calibration values that are 6dB too low.

Cal Test

1.3

Measuring Peak Amplitude

acal ),

When extracting calibration amplitudes (which make up

it will be necessary to measure the peak

amplitude at specic frequencies. To measure the single-sided peak amplitude at a particular frequency:

Window with some window

Take a DFT of the result (for speed, use an FFT with a power of 2)

Divide by the sum of the window taps

Scale by 2 (for single-sided amplitude), except at DC and Nyquist

Interpolate to nd the peak amplitude and frequency

Specically, windowing

x[n]

with a window

w[n]

l samples, we normalize

1,
k = 0, N2
F =
2, otherwise

oset by

P
,
A[k] = F DF T {x[n]w[nl]}[k]
w[n]
n

to recover the single-sided amplitude

kfs
N , where

A[k] at frequency

the DFT as such:

(12)

is the DFT length and

fs is the sampling

frequency.
Using a Gaussian window increases the accuracy of quadratic interpolation in the (dB) amplitude.

1.4

Power Spectral Density

If the data signal

x[n]

is calibrated and carries units pT, then the periodogram

at frequency

kfs
N is given

by

and so

kfs
N

2
F |DF T {x[n]w[nl]}[k]|
P
2
fs
|w[n]|
n

pT 2
Hz


,

F =

1,
2,

k = 0, N2
otherwise

(13)

pT
carries units of
.

To recover the amplitude of a deterministic tone in pT,

Hz
integrated over the relevant bandwidth.

must be

An estimate of the Power Spectral Density (PSD) is obtained by taking the average of many successive
periodograms, where each

Pl

is calculated with a dierent window oset l:

Pl
L

P SD =

(14)

where L is the total number of sample periodograms used. This technique for estimating the PSD is known
as Welch's method.

1.5

Receiver Sensitivity

Figure 1 shows the measured, uncalibrated Power Spectral Density from several hardware setups using the
AWESOME receiver. With the minimum value set to
16-bit sampling, covering the range

215

to

215 1

=1

(the AWESOME receiver records values with

in increments of 1), the one-sided quantization noise

oor (QNF) is


QN F = 10log10
shown by the dotted black line.

2 1
12 fs /2



pT
= 57.8 dB
Hz

(15)

The blue curve shows the measured noise oor, obtained using Welch's

method, of the receiver with no lter card. This noise oor is generated from a noise source after the lter
card. The green curve shows the noise oor with the lter card inserted into the preamp, but with no preamp
connection. This noise oor is generated by a noise source introduced in the anti-aliasing lter card which
eectively reduces the dynamic range of the system by
overall dynamic range to

80 dB.

-40 - -57 = 17 dB, or by

3 bits, limiting the

AWESOME Receiver Noise Floor

Preamp: 30 dB Gain

dB-raw/sqrt(Hz)

10
Preamp: 20 dB Gain
20
Preamp: 10 dB Gain
30
Preamp: 0 dB Gain
40

Filter card only (no Preamp)

No Filter Card

50
Quantization Noise Floor
60
0

10

20
30
Frequency [kHz]

40

50

Figure 1: AWESOME receiver noise oor

The next four plots (red, cyan, magenta, and yellow) show the uncalibrated (raw) noise oor with the
preamp connected at the four possible gain settings: 0, 10, 20, and 30 dB, respectively. At the 0 dB gain
setting, the noise oor is dominated by the lter card above 20 kHz and by the preamp card below 20 kHz.
Increasing the gain in the preamp by 10 dB, we see that the noise oor increases by
and

7 dB below 20 kHz

3 dB above 20 kHz. Since the input signal is amplied by 10 dB, we will have an improvement of 3

dB (7 dB) below (above) 20 kHz in the signal to noise ratio (SNR). The dynamic range will also be reduced
by 7 dB (3 dB) below (above) 20 kHz.

Increasing the gain switch to 20 dB, the noise oor is uniformly

increased by 10 dB, and so the SNR will remain the same while the dynamic range is reduced by 10 dB.
This happens again going to the 30 dB gain setting.
The optimal gain setting will therefore be application dependent.

If dynamic range is of primary im-

portance, then the 0dB gain setting should be used. If sensitivity is more important, than the 10 dB gain
setting should be used. Little is gained by going to the 20 dB and 30 dB gain settings.
The PSD curves drawn in Figure 1 correspond to raw uncalibrated data. The input-referred sensitivity is

Bcal
acal , where Bcal depends on the
antenna A area and number of windings N , as in equation (5). Figure 2 shows the input-referred sensitivity
2
using the 0dB gain setting for two antenna congurations: T1 (A = 1.69 m , N = 12) and T2 (A = 17.64


17.646
2
m , N = 6). The sensitivity of T2 is 20log10 1.6912 = 14.4dB better than T1. For reference, the red curve
shows the natural noise oor, and the dotted blue and green curves show the theoretical sensitivities for the
calculated by scaling each frequency component by the calibration number

two antenna sizes. The frequency axis is plotted on a log scale to highlight the features.
Increasing

N A

of the antenna improves sensitivity and SNR. If the local measured noise oor is close

to the receiver sensitivity, then that site will benet from an antenna with a larger
that increasing

N A

N A.

Note, too,

increases the gain, thereby reducing the maximum peak amplitude before receiver

saturation.
Figures 3 and 4 plot the measured PSD in blue, together with the natural noise oor for reference and
the measured receiver sensitivity in magenta, at Tucson, AZ and Juneau, AK, respectively. At Tucson, a
smaller T1 antenna is used, but the measured background noise is still higher than the receiver sensitivity.

Receiver Sensitivity for 0 dB Gain

T1

T2
T1
T2
0.5

10

Frequency [kHz]

Figure 2: AWESOME receiver sensitivity

50

Power Spectral Density (PSD)

Figure 3: Measured PSD and sensitivity at Tucson

At Juneau, the larger T2 antenna is used, allowing for measuring a natural noise oor which is

15 dB lower

than the sensitivity of the receiver at Tucson.

The Marantz PMD671 recorder also has an internal noise source after the input amplication, so the
gain on the recorder front-end must be set suciently high so that this internal noise source does not limit
the HUMSNIFFER measured spectrum.

1.6

A Note on Windowing

The measured spectral dynamic range will be limited by the relative side lobe height of the windowing
function

w.

For example, if a rectangular window is used, the rst side lobe is only 13 dB down from the

main-lobe peak. While the side lobe level rolls o at approximately 6 dB per octave, the measured spectrum
will still have a much lower maximum dynamic range than the receiver. In general, the windowing function
should be chosen to ensure that the side lobe level does not limit the measured dynamic range. A Kaiser
window with a high

provides a convenient trade-o between main lobe width and side lobe height.

System Response

raw
pT , for one channel. The Broadband
Analysis Tutorial goes through the mechanics of the amplitude and phase calibrations in greater detail.

Figure 5 plots the measured system impulse response, in units of

The attenuation below 1 kHz and above 48 kHz are reected in the receiver sensitivity in Figure 2.
Figure 6 shows the corresponding inverse system response, which may be convolved with the raw data
record to produce calibrated data. The lter taps in Figure 6 carry units of

pT
raw .

Power Spectral Density (PSD)

Filter Taps [raw/pT]

Figure 4: Measured PSD and sensitivity at Juneau

Measured System Response

Unwrapped Phase
[deg]

Magnitude
[dB-raw/pT]

Time [usec]

Frequency [Hz]

Figure 5: AWESOME receiver system response

Time [usec]

Unwrapped Phase
[deg]

Magnitude
[dB-pT/raw]

Filter taps [pT/raw]

Pre-filter

Frequency [Hz]

Figure 6: AWESOME receiver inverse response