Barely Works Technology
Metric and Awards

How about just using an extension below the axis of RST?

Readability is just the number of Sigmas in your statics, if properly controlled.  5 or 6 sigma is believable to anyone.  My EME2 outing was 4.2 Sigma.  Q-4 is awards grade.  "Minimums" is Q-2.  Is 2-Sigma too low for "minimums?"

Signal strength:  The accepted standard is 50 microvolts is -73 dBm for S9.  This puts S0 at 0.1 microvolt or -127 dBm.  This is kind of the threshold for noisy FM, but on CW and even SSB you can have Q-3 below that in a typical 600K front end.  My EME2 outing was S "-10"  We just need a way to say that.  "S minus ten?"  Or just drop the minus when the context is understood to be this.  Or give it a different name like "U" for "Under S0" so it would U10.  Then the system would be RUT.  We're way in a RUT.

Tone.  Nobody has evaluated tone in my time as an amateur, even on the rare occasions when they needed to and it would have made a difference to some poor guy.  But, here it could be a metric of how well you stayed on frequency or got on frequency compared to what was needed.  In my EME2 outing I didn't need to be on frequency except relative to myself but I did need to stay on frequency with respect to myself for the five second intervals.  Let's say you were in a 2.3 Hz bandwidth like I was.  The transmissions were for two seconds implying a needed guard band of 0.5 Hz.  On both sides, that leaves that I need to be in 1.3 Hz to contain everything to the first keying lobe.  I actually saw power in the +/- 1 bins which could have something to do with the keying sidebands.  So, anyway, how stable was I compared to 1.3 Hz?  I don't know.  I know I have a ppm offset which is 100-150 Hz.  This may wander around by a few Hz and I have no way to see it.

What if we didn't make it need relative but made it Allan Variance relative.  PPM stability over the integration interval would be T6, that is 10^-6.  So, my setup would be T6 absolute and T8 relative, as proven by the EME2 success.  GPS disciplined could achieve absolute T10 or T12.

So, my EME2 outing RUT would be 4 10 8 R where the R means Relative.  And this is more or less equivalent to an RST of 4 -10 8 for the loopback application.



This is the first iteration of thinking on this, untouched:

The metric needs to be
  - easy to understand (like DXCC or contest points but less arbitrary)
  - independent of antenna or transmitter power
  - like Larkin's 5 W. 1 hour single antenna detection but normalized
  - physically meaningful, not like "miles per watt"
  - compare to existing CW and SSB as a reference point
  - independent of time -- we're admitting that we're patient
  - thus, probably needs to be in Joules, not watts or rewards Joules rather than watts
  - maybe it's certainty relative to some reference dBm

Mine was 4.2 Sigma -- 50,000:1 is 47 dB Sigma at -186 dBm

So maybe it's level - certainty (that is, level / certainty)

How about this for the metric:
  sig dBm + sigma dB + time dB

This gives an equivalent to dBm signal levels.  The sigma is sigmas of the peak out of noise bins; smaller is weaker.  Time is the integration time or inverse bandwidth.  More time is a weaker signal.  More bandwidth is stronger.

My EME2 was -187.36 dBm + log( 4.2 ) + log( 10952 seconds ) = -140.73
N6NB Q-3 at 12 WPM is -145.6 + log( 3 ) + log( 0.1 Hz ) = -151
Q-1 SSB is -150 + log( 1 ) + log( 1/2000 Hz ) = -117
Q-5 SSB is -130 + log( 3 ) + log( 1/2000 Hz ) = -157

this isn't right yet - needs more thought and work

The award system
  - uses the metric to reward performance in the noise rather than big station
  - but also rewards scaling up (i.e., my demo says EVE is possible then somebody else does it by scaling up, we both get an award)
  - starts at 10 dB below CW
  - can also compare to ZRO Test Z-8 contest at AMSAT maybe
  - needs to encourage algorithms and equipment optimizations

last updated 2007 July 7, cbd