CIE Components in Electronics
Tektronix has announced that its real-time spectrum analysers (RTSAs) now offer up to 165 MHz acquisition bandwidth, the widest currently available in this price range. This bandwidth supports demanding applications such as high-margin, high accuracy WLAN 802.11ac characterisation and troubleshooting.
In addition to increased bandwidth, Tektronix, has significantly improved the real-time performance and signal detection improvements of its RSA5000 and SPECMON series of RTSAs.
“Wireless standards are changing to require more bandwidth and at the same time signal durations are getting shorter, making them more difficult than ever to detect,” said Jim McGillivary, general manager, Source Analyzer Product Line, Tektronix. “With these introductions, Tektronix is giving our customers the characterisation and troubleshooting tools with superior real-time features at the lowest price on the market.”
Tektronix RTSAs offer a number of unique features that include density trigger, time-qualified triggers and innovative swept DPX display technology that makes it easier to find unwanted transmissions. These instruments also offer the industry’s best integration of real-time and multiple domain analysis, with all interactions available through a single interface.
Key features and specification improvements include the following:
- The RSA5000B series offers up to 165 MHz acquisition bandwidth. This wider bandwidth also supports the new 160 MHz bandwidth found in 802.11ac, up from 40 MHz in prior 802.11 versions.
- The minimum signal duration for 100 percent Probability of Intercept (POI) has improved 33 percent to a class-leading 2.8 µsec. This ensures that even the briefest signals are discovered, triggered on and saved, minimizing time to intercept in spectrum management applications.
- Highest performance real-time features — previously available only for an extra cost – are now standard in RSA5000B instruments, including swept DPX, density trigger, time-qualified triggers and improved minimum signal duration. Spectrum processing rate has increased by 33%, to more than 390,000 spectrums/sec.
- A 26.5 GHz version of the SPECMON series is now available and advanced DPX RF signal discovery capability is now standard. This enables SPECMON to be used for high performance spectrum management involving higher frequency signals including microwave links, backhaul signals and radar.
- Expanded support for 802.11 WLAN standards (optional) including the widest-bandwidth 802.11ac variant. This enables designers of all WLAN components, systems and designs to take advantage of the real-time feature set of Tektronix spectrum analyzers, resulting in higher design confidence, minimum time to fault, and reduced time to market.
The enhancements to the RSA and SPECMON instruments are part of a much broader push by Tektronix to give embedded engineers, component designers and spectrum managers a complete set of tools tailored to their specific needs.
