USB-TG124A to use with BB60C

Hi,
I was wondering if the USB-TG124A can be use with BB60C in facilitating scalar network analyzer measurements?

I’m working as an engineer in a local R&D company doing WiFi products, my job involves optimizing and debugging RF front end of our products. The capabilities of the BB60C is major plus but would be greatly expanded with a tracking generator that goes along with it.

We are planning on adding tracking generator compatibility with the BB60C, but we have not established a timeline yet. The down side is that the speed would be limited to 300-700 points per second, about the same as the SA-series. I’ll post more information as it becomes available.

Hi Justin, many thanks on the reply. I am considering purchasing USB-TG124A and USB-SA124B OPTION 2. I was contemplating on purchasing BB60C but since I need to perform loss measurements and impedance matching in cable as well as PCBA level, not to mention EMC pre-compliance testing on current products as well as upcoming products and yes our company is on a tight budget with regards to test equipment’s.
Anyway, can you help me my queries.
1. Can you provide info as well as limitations when doing occupied bandwidth, channel power, adjacent power, harmonic distortion measurements on a 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz wifi signal. At least on its lowest data rate (a/b/g). I understand constellation and EVM related measurements are out of the question with regards to these models, but I can live with that.
2. Any limitation when measuring frequency response on filters with 1Ghz bandwidth. We need it to optimize discrete balun filters in the entire channels of 2.4Ghz as well as 5Ghz band.

Thank you and looking forward on your reply.

[Andrew]

Our new software release (Feb 2015) will enable the SA124B to make occupied bandwidth, channel power, adj. CP, harmonic distortion, as long as all signals analyzed fit within 40 MHz, and are roughly “white” when viewed as narrow-band. Our current software supports everything but occupied bandwidth.

You can easily measure devices with any bandwidth using the TG and SA. However, these would generally be swept scalar measurements (no vector information for impedance matching). We have single-frequency vector capabilities with our Smith Chart utility, but it does not have all of the VNA length correction features, etc, so you might need a calculator and a few complex multiplies to get a useful vector impedance measurement.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 10 months ago by Andrew. Reason: Changed 2014 to 2015

I should mention as well that for the SA124 broadband channel power measurements, you would need the signal to have a 100% duty cycle.

Hi Justin, thank you for the info. the new firmware will be worth the wait. I should also mention, will the new release include spectrum mask pass/fail measurements? We usually check if the spectral mask of our product IEEE802.11a/g waveform with 54Mbps, 64QAM will conform with FCC/CE requirements.

Thank you.

Hello Mervin,

The software provides user defined limit lines. Users can define spectrum masks/limit lines via a CSV file usually of the form (freq, min, max) triplets which define the spectrum mask and the software will report a pass/fail message for each sweep.

Regards,
A.J.

Hi Justin,

Great! this would be very help full in my work. One more thing. Can you able to elaborate more the difference in terms of performance of having precision 10 MHz time base of USB-SA124B compared to the normal USB-SA124B. Any limitation in USB-SA124B that you can point out when using 10 Mhz time base on the USB-SA124B (without option 2).

Thanks a lot for the reply.

Regards,
Mervin

The precision 10 MHz option is handy if you don’t have access to a GPS-disciplined 10 MHz. As long as your external 10 MHz is clean, an external reference will generally perform about as well as an internal reference, and will perform much better for close-in phase noise (think 10 Hz offset). If your 10 MHz input is not clean, it may actually degrade your system performance.

I have scheduled AJ to write software that should be done by the end of April 2015 for the TG44A and TG124A tracking generators to become compatible with the BB60C.

Hi Bruce, Thank you for the great news. I’ve already ordered USB-TG124A and USB-SA124B OPTION 2 from one of your Authorized Distributor (DT techsolutions Pte Ltd) here in Singapore.

I downloaded the SPIKE software in preparation for the units arrival. I also went through the forums and got lots of positive comments. I had read the USB-SA124B manual and found out that the SPIKE software doesn’t support the Smith Chart Utility anymore. I have to bring this up since it’s critical to my work. I’ts one of the main reason I actually very interested in your product. Is there anyway this feature can be included on next software update?

Thanks a lot.

Hi Mervin, the Smith Chart utility is still available in version 2.18B which can be downloaded from our website. Both Spike and 2.18B can be loaded on you computer at the same time. Just choose which one you want to launch depending on the work you are doing.

Hi Bruce, thank you for the suggestion. I’ve just received the units yesterday and started working on the SA using the latest version of SPIKE. So far so good. I haven’t got around to try on the TG.
My first impression, good product and potentially great.

Thank you and I hope you and your team will continue to support users such as myself to get the most of your products capability.

Thank you.

Hi Bruce, I’ve learned from your distributor in Singapore that your company is working on model BB2… something which has a bandwidth up to 20Ghz. Please comment. This model will be potentially a good addition to our company R&D laboratory.

Thank you, keep up the good work and hope you will maintain and still position your products to be available for the masses.

Thank you ones again.

Hi Mervin, yes, we have began the design cycle work on a 100kHz to 20GHz spectrum analyzer. I don’t know the price or the size it will be yet. It will be known as the model BB200A. It will operate much the same as the BB60C with specifications that are also very similar. The instantaneous bandwidth will be the same as the BB60C and it will also run on Spike software. I estimate it will be in production by the end of the year.

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