How Power Peaks Develop - Agilent Technologies X Series User Manual

Basic Digital Operation (Option 653/655/656/657)
Clipping a Waveform

How Power Peaks Develop

To see how clipping reduces high power peaks, it is important to understand how the peaks develop
as you construct a signal.
Multiple Channel Summing
I/Q waveforms can be the summation of multiple channels, as shown in the following figure. If a bit
in the same state (high or low) occurs simultaneously in several individual channel waveforms, an
unusually high power peak (positive or negative) occurs in the summed waveform.
Because the high and low states of the bits in channel waveforms are random and generally result in
a cancelling effect, high power peaks occur infrequently with multiple channel summing.
186 Agilent X-Series Signal Generators User's Guide