Product category:
Stand-Alone Instruments
News Release from: Tektronix | Subject: Signal source analysis suite
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 25 November 2005
Software suite puts spectrum analysers
to work
A new software package provides easy-to-use automated signal source analysis tools to characterise phase noise, jitter, frequency deviation and settling time for transient RF signals.
Tektronix has introduced a new signal source analysis suite for the WCA200A, RSA3300A and RSA3408A real-time spectrum analysers The new software package provides engineers with easy-to-use, automated signal source analysis tools to characterise phase noise, jitter, frequency deviation and settling time for transient RF signals
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 7 Oct 2008 at 8.00am (UK)
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The suite also provides new, exclusive time-related measurements such as phase noise over time, a powerful tool for engineers looking for elusive intermittent effects.
RF design engineers are faced with the challenge of delivering products that are more integrated, faster switching and more stable than ever before.
With these design challenges, it is increasingly difficult to maintain signal quality while delivering the desired performance.
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Real-time spectrum analysers enable quick and easy characterisation of these circuits and components and are particularly useful for looking at transient responses such as frequency settling or intermittent signals causing interference or spurs.
Traditionally, measurement setups for accurate phase noise and time related measurements are very complex.
Through automated setups and key measurements such as phase noise measured over time, frequency settling time analysis and spurious signal search, the new signal source analysis suite for real-time spectrum analysers offers the engineer all the advanced analysis and troubleshooting capabilities needed to address these design challenges.
With increasing signal speeds, these challenges are no longer confined to traditional RF designs.
Engineers working on high speed embedded designs utilising backplane interfaces and serial buses that are in the gigahertz range are now dealing with RF phenomena in their digital designs.
The real-time spectrum analyser allows engineers to move effortlessly between time-domain measurements such as jitter, and more traditional RF measurements.
"The new signal source analysis suite takes the already powerful real-time spectrum analyser analysis tools, and extends them with new views that will help engineers gain deeper insights into their design's performance", said Rick King, Vice President, Real-Time Spectrum Analyser Product Line, Tektronix.
"These tools also bridge the gap between traditional time-domain and frequency-domain measurements".
"Today's high-speed digital is truly RF, and new tools are needed to help engineers with problems they've never faced in digital designs".
"The real-time spectrum analyser with the new signal source analysis suite is exactly that tool".
The signal source analysis suite offer several unique displays to help engineers solve transient problems.
A real-time phase noise display combines a spectrogram - displaying frequency horizontally, time vertically and amplitude as a colour scale - and a traditional spectrum analyser view displaying a signal with noise sidebands, and adds phase noise display and jitter measurements.
The benefit to the engineer is the capability to perform real time adjustments on their design and immediately analyse the affect on phase noise and jitter performance without the need to perform separate time consuming measurements on different instruments.
A new "Noisogram" display is similar to the spectrogram display except the horizontal axis for frequency is a log scale, the vertical axis is time, and amplitude is shown as a colour scale.
The Noisogram is defined as the measured phase noise displayed over time.
This unique capability allows the engineer to quickly identify and correlate potential noise contributions in either the time or the frequency domain.
The Noisogram helps designers of PLLs optimise loop gain bandwidth and overall phase noise performance by identifying if the loop dynamics are performing to design specifications.
They have the flexibility to select desired carrier bandwidth amplitude offset to measure the integrated phase noise, random jitter and maximum periodic jitter.
Additionally, Noisogram displays provide engineers with insight into transient signals.
For example, real-time capability allows an engineer to analyse the effects of intermittent spurious signals on phase noise.
With this view, an engineer can now optimise the overall design to be stable even in the presence of intermittent interfering signals.
The signal source measurement and analysis suite is available now and offered as an option for the WCA200A, RSA3300A and RSA3408A real-time spectrum analysers. Request a free brochure from Tektronix ...
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