Modulation Analysis using API

I am currently developing a test fixture for calibration/testing of an RF module. Each module needs to know its RF power and carrier offset. My USB-SA44B can report these numbers when configured in modulation analysis mode. However, I don’t see any references to modulation analysis mode in the API. Does this mean that modulation analysis mode is a feature of Spike, and not the instrument per se?

Hi Jared,

You are correct. These measurements are features of Spike and are not available through a public API.

The SA44 API consists only of low level data acquisition functions. You would need to use the API to retrieve IQ data from the receiver and then make your measurements on this data. Average power would be easy to calculate but carrier offset of a digitally modulated signal is non-trivial.

At this moment, there is not a way to retrieve these measurements programatically. We have talked about making Spike programmable via SCPI but there is no definite plans of this yet.

I apologize for the inconvenience.
If you have additional questions, please let me know.

Regards,
Andrew

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