Understanding differences between BB60C and D

Hi there,

I recently purchased a BB60D and was wondering about the hardware differences between the C and D. I had a few questions I was hoping I could find answers to.

1) Does the D-series BB60 use a higher bit-count ADC? Does it sample at 14 or 16 bits?

2) What are the dynamic range specifications for the BB60D? All I can seem to dig up is “10db improvement over the BB60C.”

3) When using the BB60D with HDSDR, with the ExtIO driver decimation set to 2, what kind of dynamic range can I expect? If I increase the decimation, will I increase the dynamic range respectively?

I am working on troubleshooting the ExtIO driver not working properly with SodiraSDR. I was able to compile it from source and it works fine without event with HDSDR, Windows 11, the latest Visual Studio Free Release and the BB60D with the most recent public release of the SignalHound SDK.

Finally, what is the best way to share updated code with SignalHound if I am able to identify and mitigate the inability of SodiraSDR to properly load the driver and initialize the device?

Thank you!

I will have another engineer comment on the performance improvements of the BB60D, but regarding the ExtIO changes, you can email any findings to aj@signalhound.com. We haven’t used SodiraSDR here, but whatever you find will probably be applicable to more people and we can try to update our offerings with your modifications.

Thank you Phil.

Phil,
The BB60D uses the same ADC as the BB60C. It’s a very good 14 bit ADC. The dynamic range improvements came from using high IP3 amplifiers and mixers, and carefully balancing gain through the entire signal chain (too much or too little gain anywhere in the signal chain and either your noise floor or linearity pay a price).

Distortion free dynamic range is 2/3 (IP3-DANL). With a -10 dBm reference level, IP3 at 1 GHz (on the most recent unit calibrated) is +15 dBm, and DANL at the same settings is -142 dBm for a 1 Hz bandwidth, so dynamic range would be about 104.7 dB at 1 GHz, normalized to a 1 Hz RBW. It would be lower at 6 GHz than 1 GHz, and obviously lower at higher RBWs as well.

We do not spec dynamic range, but we do specify worst case DANL and IP3. Hopefully this helps.

We also added a preselector to the BB60D. It is a sub-octave preselector designed to greatly reduce any second-order nonlinearities (IP2) above 130 MHz by rejecting out-of-band energy.
Below 130 MHz, we have a direct conversion band to 30 MHz, and above that a band that uses a push-pull amplifier to improve IP2 (but to a lesser extent than the preselector).

Andrew and Justin,
I really appreciate both of your helpful responses. Thanks again.

Hi Justin,

I share the same query as Phil, and thank you for your information.

I am curious to know whether the preselector is of hardware or software implementation? and how many sub-bands are there within 130MHz – 6GHz range?

Thank you.

It is a hardware preselector (band pass filter before any amplification or mixing). There are 12 bands but only 10 of those are true preselector bands. DC-30 MHz is direct to ADC, and 30-130 MHz is a push-pull amplifier.

Thank you Justin.

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