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. Realtime 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.
Tektronix has now introduced a new Signal Source Analysis Suite for the WCA200A, RSA3300A and RSA3408A realtime 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. 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.
Traditionally, measurement set-ups for accurate phase noise and time related measurements are very complex. Through automated set-ups and key measurements such as phase noise measured over time, frequency settling time analysis and spurious signal search, the company says that the new suite 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 using backplane interfaces and serial buses that are in the GHz range are now dealing with RF phenomena in their digital designs. The realtime 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 realtime 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, realtime 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 have never faced in digital designs. The realtime 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 realtime 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 realtime adjustments on their design and immediately analyse the effect 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.
For more information contact Channels Measurement Services, 0800 11 7850.
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