Systems and methodologies are described that facilitate monitoring transmitter performance in a wireless communication environment. A signal analyzer can be used to sample the output of a transmitter and the sampled signal can be propagated to a processor. The processor can generate frequency domain channel estimates for the subcarriers. If the transmitted modulation symbols are unknown, the processor can determine the modulation symbols and use the determined modulation symbols to calculate the channel estimates. The channel estimates can be averaged and used to generate various metrics to evaluate the transmitter performance.