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Stand-Alone Instruments
News Release from: Agilent Technologies Europe | Subject: Agilent EXA signal analyser
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 06 September 2007
Signal analyser eases troubleshooting
The Agilent EXA signal analyser provides flexible, scalable signal analysis to budget-conscious engineers.
Agilent Technologies has released the EXA signal analyser, designed to allow development and manufacturing engineers to cost-effectively troubleshoot new designs, increase manufacturing throughput, or analyse complex and time-varying signals The Agilent EXA signal analyser provides flexible, scalable signal analysis to budget-conscious engineers who don't want to sacrifice speed, accuracy, application coverage or modern connectivity
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 14 Jan 2008 at 8.00am (UK)
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At a lower performance point than Agilent's MXA signal analyser, EXA seamlessly integrates the same broad range of standards-based measurements with Agilent's 89600 vector signal analysis (VSA) software, all in a single instrument.
In addition to the use of an open Windows XP Professional operating system, the EXA also provides an advanced signal analysis user interface.
All measurement features and functions are accessible from the front panel or via a USB keyboard and mouse.
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Optional measurement application software provides preconfigured test routines for GSM/EDGE, 802.16e Mobile WiMAX, W-CDMA, HSDPA/HSUPA and phase-noise applications.
Running the Agilent 89600 VSA software application in the EXA enables advanced signal demodulation analysis and troubleshooting of more than 50 demodulation formats including: 2G, 3G, 3.5G, WiMAX, WLAN and private mobile radio.
Agilent's EXA includes a comprehensive set of standard one-button-power measurements for characterising signal quality.
These include ACPR, channel power, occupied bandwidth, spectrum emissions mask, CCDF, burst power and spurious emission.
The system allows measurements up to 300% faster than other economy-class signal analysers.
The EXA returns a marker peak search result in less than 5ms, local updates in less than 10ms, and remote sweep and transfer (via GPIB) in less than 12ms.
Measurement mode switching speeds are typically less than 75ms.
This speed enables a fast and seamless change between WiMAX, W-CDMA, HSDPA/HSUPA, GSM/EDGE, phase noise measurements, and 89600 VSA software.
As a result, the EXA provides the fastest local and remote measurements for expediting automated tests and accelerating design verification.
"Agilent is fully committed to expanding its measurement offerings to address the performance and functionality requirements of new wireless applications at different performance and price points", said Guy Sene, Vice President of Agilent's Signal Analysis Division.
Fast, remote measurement capabilities (via LAN, GPIB, or USB 2.0) such as sweep/trace transfer, local updates, ACLR, marker peak search and mode switching are especially useful in manufacturing environments, where the increased speed results in improved test system throughput.
The accuracy of the EXA allows manufacturing engineers to optimise their test budgets for manufacturing variances as opposed to test instrument uncertainties.
It also provides engineers with the confidence to pinpoint signal quality issues and facilitates troubleshooting and diagnostic evaluations.
This enables an accelerated transition from design into manufacturing and helps reduce the overall cost of test.
The EXA signal analyser supports multiple frequency ranges from 9kHz to 3.6, 7.0, 13.6 and 26.5GHz, an internal fully calibrated pre-amplifier option up to 3.6GHz, and standard analysis bandwidths of 10MHz.
This fully scalable functionality is complemented by EXA's +13dBm third-order intercept, -146dBm/Hz displayed average noise level (without pre-amp) and 66dB W-CDMA ACLR dynamic range, as well as a 0.4dB total absolute amplitude accuracy, which is made possible by the all-digital, 14bit ADC IF section.
The dynamic range is maximised with an optional 2dB mechanical step attenuator over the full frequency range and an optional 1dB electronic attenuator to 3.6GHz.
The Agilent EXA signal analyser is fully compliant with the LXI Class-C specification.
Connectivity is possible via 100 based-T LAN, GPIB and seven USB 2.0 ports.
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