TEST & MEASUREMENT APPLICATION NOTES AND WHITE PAPERS

  • Directivity And VSWR Measurements: Understanding Return Loss Measurements

    The characterization of microwave networks requires discriminating between forward and backward traveling waves. Unfortunately no directional device is perfect, leading to potentially dramatic measurement errors. In this note we show that return loss and VSWR measurements are greatly complicated by the finite performance of the directional device used to measure the reflected power.

  • Power Supply Control Loop Response Measurements (Bode Plot)

    The R&S® RTx-K36 frequency response analysis (Bode plot) option provides a low-cost alternative to low frequency network analyzers or dedicated standalone frequency analyzers. 

  • Verifying The Clock Source

    In order to select or develop a clock generator to use in your design or to ensure that the supplied system clock has the proper performance, you'll need to consider phase noise, jitter, wideband noise and spurs as performance indicators.

  • Speeding Up Reflection Measurements On Antenna Systems

    Reflection measurements are a common way of assessing antenna system performance. When a minimum amount of the transmitted signal is reflected, it indicates that the transmission energy can reach the intended coverage. Undesired high reflection causes the system to be inefficient and can damage components. This application note presents solutions for aiding fast and efficient reflection measurements on antenna systems to get it right the first time.

  • Telecommunications Testing Using AR Amplifiers

    This application note explores a number of testing requirements for telecommunication devices and how to benefit from AR RF/Microwave Instrumentation’s products. The paper will cover two broad categories of device testing – characterization and reliability – within mid to high power systems.

TEST & MEASUREMENT SOLUTIONS

The 50S-2133 SMA from JFW is a solid-state, self-terminating 1P8T RF switch designed for economical automated RF testing applications in the 20 – 5,000 MHz frequency range.

Model HP 4268A is a capacitance meter designed for testing high value multilayer ceramic capacitor (MLCC) designs

Holzworth Instrumentation was founded as a phase noise measurement company. Along the path to phase noise analysis solutions, our high performance building blocks were developed and sold in the form of RF Synthesizers, Phase Detectors, etc. The HA7401A is a Fixed Frequency Phase Noise Analyzer, and the HA7402A is a Phase Noise Measurement Engine.

dB Control’s family of traveling wave tube amplifiers (TWTAs) features a combined frequency range of 2 to 18 GHz up to 15kW output power. dB Control utilizes our proprietary transformer fabrication, encapsulation and high-voltage potting techniques developed for demanding military applications which results in superior reliability, low cost and ease of maintenance.  Products in this series are ideal for several applications, including: test and measurement, electronic warfare (EW) simulation, RFI/EMI/EMC Testing, electronic countermeasures (ECM), and antenna pattern and radar-cross section measurements.

The dB-3906 TWT Amplifier (TWTA) is designed to use two wideband, periodic permanent magnet (PPM)-focused TWTs to amplify CW, AM, FM or pulse-modulated signals. The dB-3906 offers higher saturated output power and improved harmonic performance when compared to a single TWT approach.

The RFvision-3 is a tunable ultra-wideband spectrum processing solution designed for 1 GHz bandwidth RF spectrum recording with advanced pulse processing. This rack-mount (3U) system is based on the DTA-9590W ultra-wideband tuner and DTA-5000 RAID server with 24 TB SSDs. It operates from 500 MHz to 18 GHz (expandable up to 40 GHz) and features 100 MHz instantaneous bandwidth.

Radar simulation systems (i.e., RF sources and/or receivers) must perform to an exacting minimum standard if they are to accurately prove the field worthiness of EW systems.

Pentek offers the Quartz® Model 6003 high-performance Quartz eXpress Module (QuartzXM) based on the Xilinx Zynq UltraScale+ RFSoC FPGA. The RFSoC FPGA integrates eight RF-class A/D and D/A converters into the Zynq’s multiprocessor architecture, creating a multichannel data conversion and processing solution on a single chip.