Test & Measurement


Agilent enhances signal analyser performance

4 September 2013 Test & Measurement

Agilent Technologies has boosted the core performance of two of its X-Series signal analysers – the midrange MXA and general-purpose EXA. The respective improvements in phase noise allow engineers to more precisely characterise the frequency stability of oscillators and synthesisers. The faster sweep speeds of these analysers accelerate searches for spurious signals in the testing of transmitters, active antenna arrays and power amplifiers.

Phase-noise performance is a key factor in obtaining low and accurate error vector magnitude values for communication systems and devices. In the MXA, phase noise has been improved by 10 dB or more for close-in and pedestal offset frequencies. EXA phase-noise performance is up to 5 dB better across wide offset frequencies.

In manufacturing test, spur searches in wide spans at narrow resolution bandwidths have been slow and are often the cause of bottlenecks. According to Agilent, the new ‘fast sweep’ capability of these analysers is up to five times faster than that of competitive models, depending on resolution bandwidth. Faster sweeps improve measurement throughput and make it easier to check the spurious-free dynamic range of devices under test.

Agilent also announced new capabilities in three of the measurement applications available for X-Series signal analysers. The N9069A noise figure measurement application now includes advanced features that support measurements of multistage converters, multipliers and dividers.

The N9080A (FDD) and N9082A (TDD) LTE measurement applications now support multimedia broadcast single-frequency network (MBSFN) signals with mixed cyclic-prefix subframe structures. This allows engineers to test physical multicast channels and MBSFN reference signals using virtually any subframe-structure configuration.

The N9083A multi-standard radio measurement application has been enhanced to support non-contiguous test configurations as defined in 3GPP Release 10. This enables one-button measurements of the cumulative adjacent-channel leakage ratio.



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