The Waves instrument consists of one electric dipole antenna, one magnetic search coil, two pre-amplifiers, three receivers, and a digital processing unit. Taken together these components can detect and digitize wave electric fields from 50 Hz to 45.25 MHz and wave magnetic fields from 50 Hz to 20 kHz. At the highest duty cycle, Waves can record one sweep per second across all spectral bands while simultaneously capturing 5 waveforms invarious bands.

Electric fields are detected via an electric dipole antenna deployed from the aft flight deck in a 'V' configuration with a tip-tip length of about 4 meters. The signal from the electric antenna is conditioned in the electric preamplifier which has three frequency bands and each band has an attenuator that can be selected or not, to limit the input to the receivers under strong signal conditions. When enabled attenuations are 25.3 dB, 25.3 dB, and 19.0 dB for the 50 Hz - 20 kHz, 10 kHz - 150 kHz and 100 kHz - 45 MHz bands respectively. Wave magnetic components, are detected via a magnetic search coil which is also mounted to the aft flight deck. The signals from the search coil are conditioned by a magnetic preamplifier located close tothe sensor, but within the spacecraft thermal environment.

The instrument includes three receivers to detect signals from the sensors.
The first is a 3-channel low frequency receiver (LFR) that is used to analyze plasma waves. Two channels measure electric fields in the frequency ranges of 50 Hz to 20 kHz and 10 to 150 kHz, and one channel measures magnetic fields in the range of 50 Hz to 20 kHz. The electric channels include an attenuator that may be toggled either on or off by the automatic gain control software in the data processing unit. When on signals are attenuated by 19.8 dB (low-band) and 19.4 dB (high-band) in addition to any attenuation by the electric preamp. All 3 LFR channels are sampled simultaneously. This receiver produces a digitized waveform from each channel which is either sent directly to the ground (after compression) in burst mode or spectrum analyzed in the Waves digital signal processor to produce spectra with ~ 10 logarithmically-spaced channels per decade offrequency.

The LFR also has a noise input from the spacecraft power distribution unit (PDDU). By subtracting this noise channel from the channel from either antenna, a noise cancellation process can be carried out. Based on in-flight experience, there is insufficient spacecraft noise as determined from the line from the PDDU to merit this additional processing; this will bere-evaluated at Jupiter.

Waves also contains two nearly identical high frequency receivers, HFR-44 and HFR-45. (The numeric suffix is just a tracking ID and bares no relationship to frequency.) Each receiver contains three channels. A baseband channel, which handles measurements in the 0.1 to 3 MHz band, a down-mixed log response channel for sweep frequency operations in the 3 MHz to 41 MHz range, and a paired-mixer channel covering the 3 MHz to 45.25 MHz range for acquiring high frequency resolution spectra near the electron cyclotron frequency. To provide additional support for handling large amplitude signals, each HFR has a front-end 32 dB step-attenuator that may be set to add further attenuation to incoming signals, in 2 dB steps. The operation of the step-attenuators is handled automatically by the Wavesdigital signal processing unit.

The HFR baseband channel operates much as the LFR, though waveforms are digitized at the much higher rate of 7 Msps. Like the LFR, HFR baseband samples may be sent out 'as-is' (with compression) in burst mode or sent tothe digital signal processor for conversion to spectra in survey made.

The HFR down-mixed log response channel operates quite differently.
Incoming signals are mixed with a locally generated pure sine wave. The result is then low-pass filtered below 500 kHz. Due to the low pass filter, only frequency components within 500 kHz of the of local mixer frequency contribute to the output signal power. This down-mixed signal is directed to a log-amplifier which produces an output voltage proportional to the logarithm of the energy in the band, which is then digitized at 8-bit resolution. Measurements are taken as in a classic swept frequency receiver. The mixer signal is set to 3.5 MHz and then incremented in 1 MHz steps ending at 40.5 MHz, thus producing successive measurements of spectral density in 1 MHz bands from 3 MHz to 41 MHz. This channel is used exclusively for generating survey mode data.

The HFR paired-mixer channel shares components with the log response channelbut feeds incoming signals to two frequency mixers instead of just one.
Both mixers are set to the same mixing frequency, but for one mixer, the local tone is 90 degrees out of phase with the other. As with the log response channel, the mixer output is low-pass filtered below 500 kHz and the two resulting down-mixed signals are digitized at 1.3125 MHz and transmitted to the ground for further processing into high resolution 1 MHz bandwidth spectra, details of the processing steps are outlined in Appendix C of VOLSIS.HTM. The purpose for collecting high resolution measurements far above the baseband is to examine detailed structure near the electron cyclotron frequency, so instead of merely sweeping the receiver across all bands in a regular cadence, the mixer tone is either commanded to a particular frequency or set to automatically track Fce using measurements provided by the MAG instrument on-board. The mixer frequency can be set between 3.5 and 44.75 MHz in 0.25 MHz steps, which allows for 1 MHz spectra covering the range of 3 MHz to 45.25 MHz. In cases where Fce drops below 3 MHz the HFR baseband channel is used for data collection and the mixersare disabled.

The Waves digital signal processing unit is implemented in a field- programmable gate array. This unit handles all measurement scheduling, automatically controls receiver attenuators, provides facilities for converting digitized waveforms to spectra, provides loss-less Rice compression, and handles communications with the Juno spacecraft commandand data system.