Spectrum recording

I’m looking at using a BB60C to capture I and Q samples of various signals from 4 KHz BW to 40 MHz BW. Then we’ll want to post-process the data ourselves. From everything I can tell on the spec sheets this seems feasible. The only question I have is the timing accuracy. I’ll need to time stamp the input data very accurately (within ~5-10 ns). I’ll can provide a high accuracy GPS disciplined Cesium reference oscillator to ensure that there’s a suitable reference available. Can the BB60C handle this time of a situation?

Thanks!

Hi Tom,

If you need time stamping from a GPS, you can accomplish this but will need to utilize the C programming interface to accomplish this. Our desktop software does not expose this functionality. If it is interesting to you, a future update to our software will allow long IQ recordings with system time stamping (non GPS). I would expect this in the coming weeks to months.

Using an external GPS and our programming interface, you can expect time stamping with a resolution of around 50ns at the highest sample rates (40MS/s IQ). There is a code example of performing this on page 45 of our programming manual, which you can find linked here,
https://signalhound.com/sigdownloads/BB60C/BB60-API-Manual.pdf
It uses a deprecated function (bbFetchRaw) which has been replaced with bbGetIQ, but otherwise would remain the same if you decided to implement this.

If you have any additional questions let me know.

Regards,
A.J.

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