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Ed,
If you email support (at) signalhound, we can send you the BB60C Statement of Volatility.
To sum up, the onboard flash is used only for firmware and correction data. All instrument state and waveform capture data is stored on the PC.Thank you for your suggestions! I’ll forward them to the software team.
To clarify, the phase noise of the OCXO itself, at a 10 Hz offset, should be better than -105 dBc/Hz. Generally to measure these numbers, a phase noise tester will need a significant number of correlations.
The OCXO is only for frequency stability. It does not affect the phase noise specification (there may be a slight improvement close in). An external reference can also be used for improved frequency accuracy, especially if the external reference is disciplined to GPS.
EHackett, if you are having this issue on a brand new unit, and followed the network configuration / troubleshooting guide without success, definitely reach out to our support team. We should be able to either help you resolve the issue or set up an RMA.
I can’t think of a way to make that work. Unfortunately the SA44B triggering is really only for the tracking generators. Although we have not implemented it in firmware, the SM200 / SM435 would be capable of exporting a video trigger as a logic signal, but the BB and SA series would not. That being said, a detector diode and a comparator could generate a trigger off of a certain RF amplitude…
Ewald, I’m not sure if it would void the warranty or not, but it might. There is a ribbon cable that has 12 V power for the fans, connected internally, and you would not want to risk that shorting out. Your safest bet would be to contact support (at signal hound dot com) and we could set up an RMA to convert it to a passive cooling option. You can remove the heat sink on the passive units without voiding the warranty.
If you just need to stop the fan noise, you can set the temperature threshold higher rather than removing the fan assembly.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.
The DC block will only affect signals below 100 kHz. Remember when you connect an antenna to use ESD precautions (i.e. ground yourself to the case before and during any antenna adjustments)
Our accessory kit includes a 20 dB pad, which is enough to make measurements up to 1 watt (+30 dBm). As long as you attenuate enough to keep your signal below +10 dBm, and set your reference level to +10 dBm, and your attenuator is rated for the input power, you should be fine.
Jason,
I’m glad you found a workaround. The TG44 is occasionally a challenge to connect the first time, but the Spike software tends to connect easier on subsequent cycles. Hopefully this is your experience as well.If you double check your cables and connectors, and everything looks good, I would recommend requesting an RMA from service (at) signalhound.com. We can take a look at it and let you know what we find.
Pulses can be measured using markers in “zero span” mode. Resolution is about 5 nanoseconds.
FM linear chirp / triangular FM can also be viewed and measured using markers in zero span, up to 160 MHz bandwidth
Frequency hopping and pulsed radar: either real-time mode or zero span, depending on the metrics you need.
Barker code: We have wifi tools but no radar tools.
Comprehensive result table: no.
For radar-specific analysis, our hardware plus Sceptre software from 3 dB Labs is a go-to for a lot of people.Jay,
When everything is installed correctly, the SA44B should use the FTDI D2xx driver, not the FTDI virtual com port. It should show up under USB devices, but not under your list of COM ports. Hopefully this helps.I would recommend an active GPS antenna. As long as it has >20 dB of gain, you probably won’t benefit much from an additional amplifier. But these will be low level signals, and might be difficult to measure directly. More accurate measurements could be made by capturing I/Q and processing it using GPS algorithms.
Into a 50 ohm load, +10 dBm is about 1 V(peak), or 2Vpp. You would probably want a 1-2 watt amplifier with >20 dB of gain if you need 10 V(peak). You would probably also want to filter out harmonics before and maybe after amplifying to make it a good sinusoid.
Thank you for your recommendation. We’ll add this to our customer feature request list!
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).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.
Both devices have an Arb mode, but the VSG25 is limited to 2k symbols (very small buffer). It looks like these chirps are often clustered together in a sequence, and never wider than about a MHz, so the VSG60A would be the right choice, since its buffer is on the PC/laptop and can be very large if needed.