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Real-Time Analyzer Offers Continuous Capture, Frequency Triggering
Deep memory and software key spectrum analysis options
By Design News Staff -- Design News, February 3, 2004
The real-time signal analyses possible with Tektronix's latest spectrum analyzers give engineers a new toolbox for developing radio frequency (RF) applications. Thanks to an internal memory of up to 256 Mbytes, the RSA series can continuously capture and store transient RF signals subject to bursts, frequency hopping, and modulation changes over time.
Such time-varying-signal events are characteristic of widening wireless RF applications, ranging from RF identification (RFID) tags to pulse modulating radar, and from consumer uses such as wireless game controls to automotive applications. With this rapid growth in RF technology, design engineers need to ensure devices they develop comply with new wireless standards and the increased potential for interference in the limited radio frequency spectrum is avoided.
The RSA series' proprietary software enables analysis tools such as time-correlated simultaneous views of time, frequency, and modulation domains to analyze frequency shifts. The user can "zoom" to magnify any part of the pulse signal in the time domain and analyze the data in the frequency and modulation domains. There is also a spectrogram function that displays frequency and power amplitude behavior over time.
Another interesting feature demonstrated recently in Design News' office by Rick King, VP for RF Products, is a unique, "flexible" frequency-mask trigger. This is customizable by a user to capture transients above power levels that can be set to vary across the frequency band in question. The RSA's long memory captures all signal information on the spurious signal at one time, enabling thorough analysis. To set up a frequency mask, a user just drops and drags points on the RSA screen to form the desired boundary. A Continuous Trigger Mode provides data storage and analysis efficiency by eliminating the "dead time" between periodic pulses from the acquired data.
King notes the frequency mask can be used in security applications to detect occasional activity at a specific frequency. He adds the method can be used in design testing of mobile devices, such as cell phones, for interference monitoring and detection of spurious signals to ensure electromagnetic compatibility or regulation compliance.
Tektronix Inc. http://rbi.ims.ca/3844-576
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