|
Tracking a frequency hop
|
12/01/2004
|
| |
Applications in sectors such as surveillance and intelligence gathering, rfid, medical and automotive have created a boom in rf enabled devices, broadening the demand for test equipment that can verify conformance to the multitude of standards that have been introduced to minimise the potential risk of rf interference.
New devices mean the signals requiring measurement are becoming less predictable and there are many different modulation schemes, so tracking how frequency is moving over time has become more complex. Tektronix believes swept spectrum analysers are no longer up to the challenge and is looking at real time rf analysis as a solution.
Tektronix’ response is the RSA series of real time analysers, which offers up to 256Mbyte of memory and a frequency range from 10MHz to 8GHz. The instruments are capable of concurrently displaying an event in time, frequency, modulation and code domains. “In contrast,” says Dean Miles, Tektronix’ business development manager for Europe, “a swept spectrum analyser can only look at a single carrier frequency so there is no frequency analysis over time.”
By leveraging the memory capabilities from digital signal oscilloscopes, the RSA range allows a real time analyser to capture a whole transaction and walk back through the spectrogram to take in every signal change. A frequency mask trigger allows users to define the frequency and amplitude (power) conditions under which the instrument captures the signal information.
|
| |
Author
Graham Pitcher
|
| |
| Email this article |
| |
|
|
|
|