That's a good point -- if you want a voltage level at your meter terminals
that's proportional to power at the input of a square-law detector, you
don't need to worry about the "root" part of "rms." And the integration
behavior of your metering circuit takes care of the "mean" part, whether you
want it to or not...
-- john, KE5FX
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The typical domain for the diode detector is below
-20dBm, where the diode is operating in the
"square-law" region. I believe that the response to
complex waveforms is identical to the thermal
converter in this case. So, for example, a pulse train
with peaks of -20dBm could be accurately measured with
the diode detector. However, a pulse train with peaks
of -10 or 0 dbm and an average power of -20dBm would
not be, unless you attenuated the signal accordingly.
AW
