Evaulation_Engineering_August_2020 - 14

SIGNAL AND SPECTRUM ANALYZERS

Gap-free analysis, they said, allows recording and simulation of real-world
environments while keeping a close
eye on fast hopping and transients in
radar, electronic-warfare (EW), and
other signals.
"Automotive radar technology has
now entered the mmWave band," Leeke
and D'Amore continued. "Many predict
this application area to grow to include
hundreds of millions of connected cars
in the next few years, including around
14 million self-driving cars by 2025. This
means there can be no sacrifices in quality
when validating designs of collision threat
detection, autonomous driving, connectivity, and eco-friendly efficiency."
Wetjen and Zarrinkoub said MathWorks'
products are used for waveform analysis,
algorithm design, and system development
across a diverse mix of application domains
and signal types. "Notable examples include
wireless communications, radar and sonar,
audio, and noise and vibration," they said.
"In the wireless area, our products are used
to design and test wireless signals for lowpower IoT applications, delay-sensitive
vehicle-to-vehicle communication, and
high-throughput cellular base-station
applications."
Maxwell at Rohde & Schwarz said, "Our
signal and spectrum analyzers are used
in a wide range of applications, including
EMC precompliance and troubleshooting
and field testing of wireless signals, as well
as 5G and Wi-Fi physical layer testing, electronic warfare, radar, and satellite."
Tipton added that Rohde & Schwarz is
moving into 6G pre-research while also
addressing any communication technology using high-frequency, wideband
signals. "We are also heavily focused on
component characterization for amplifiers or frequency-converting devices,
with modulated signals. We are making
large strides with the measurement science for understanding all contributions
to modulation quality, and we are making use of network-analysis techniques
to compensate and de-embed the effects
of the measurement instruments. This is
important, for example, in the satellite
industry where wideband signals need
to be applied to transceivers with flat
frequency response."

14

EVALUATION ENGINEERING AUGUST 2020

Sponsored by

Anritsu MS2690A signal analyzer.

According to the Anritsu spokesperson, the MS269xA has the performance,
such as a level accuracy of ±0.5 dB across
a 6-GHz span, necessary for R&D. "It also
has a wideband FFT signal analyzer for
analysis bandwidth of 31.25 MHz with
options for 62.5 MHz/125 MHz to support high-speed continuous measurements on the manufacturing floor," the
spokesperson said. "The MS269xA Series
can conduct physical-layer tests on 5G
chipsets, mobile devices, and base-station
elements in accordance with all 3GPP
technologies, including 5G NR (sub-6GHz). The analyzers can also be configured to perform WLAN testing, including
IEEE802.11a/11b/11g/11j/11n/11p and
11ac, on chipsets and devices."
According to Rodriguez at Tektronix,
the RSA7100B is suited for applications
involving wideband radar, electronic
warfare and mission-critical communications systems, aerospace electromagnetic environmental effects (E3)
testing, military range testing, and
other RF recording operations. "The
Tektronix RSA7100B addresses all the
requirements of good data collection:
recording the highest quality data to
disk, completely understanding the
situational environment, and providing
real-time feedback-simultaneously," he
said. "With a frequency range of 26.5 GHz
and a maximum receiver bandwidth of
800 MHz, this instrument can capture
key radar, countermeasure, and telemetry signals and store at least 2.75 hours
of spectrum data at full rate on its own
solid-state RAID storage system."
Rodriguez added, "The new Linux API
on the RSA300, RSA500 and RSA600

Series (USB RTSAs) will serve to support applications such as electronic-warfare spectrum monitoring,
deep-data signal analysis, RF sensor
SIGINT, high-mix/low-volume manufacturing programmatic control and
test, and custom SATCOM transmitter range testing. These instruments
are used to monitor RF signals over a
large field of operation. In the military,
such as on a ship or on an airfield, the
ability to network multiple RTSAs can
be a significant benefit."

Varying form factors
Signal and spectrum analyzers come in a
variety of form factors. "Modern analyzers have similar functionality and performance in most cases, regardless of form
factor," said Chonko at SIGLENT, adding
that benchtop models typically have the
best price/performance ratio because they
eliminate the cost of specialized parts required for battery operation. "Some benchtop equipment is also fairly portable and
can be used in the field in some cases," he
said, "but benchtop equipment can also be
a little too large to haul around in a work
truck." In contrast, he said, "Handheld designs are very portable and easy-to-use in
the field, but they come at a price premium
for parts and design expertise required to
engineer battery-powered devices."
Chonko continued, "USB and PXI
modules are ideal for production test
where space for instrumentation is at a
premium, but a computer is required for
operation and there is no easy way to simply 'see' what is going on without working
through a computer interface."
Leeke and D'Amore at Keysight also
weighed in on instrument form factors.
"One size doesn't fit all-not every lab
needs the same form factor instrument,"
they said. (Leeke is the author of Keysight's
One Size Does NOT Fit All-Choosing
the Right Instrument Form Factor.) "PXI
modules are the fastest-growing segment
of test and measurement equipment. These
modular instruments allow for a small
footprint by including multiple instruments in a compact space, high throughput with direct backplane speed, and a
highly flexible configuration, by allowing
custom solutions. This solution especially
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