TEST & MEASUREMENT APPLICATION NOTES AND WHITE PAPERS

  • Four Practical Applications Using An Electronic Load

    This article presents four tips on how to test with electronic loads and illustrate the flexibility and usefulness of a DC electronic load. 

  • Electronic Packaging: Using EMI Material-Based Solutions

    It can be difficult when individual components could pass EMI testing but, as the components are combined into subsystems or into the final product, the DUT fails. Incorporating EMI shielding materials as part of an initial design is the most cost-effective way to prevent these last-minute issues during testing.

  • Waveform Acquisition Rate And Why It Matters

    Explore key specifications of modern digital oscilloscopes, including often overlooked ones like acquisition rate and blind time, to better understand their importance in oscilloscope applications.

  • 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.

  • VSWR Conversion To Reflected Power

    VSWR measures how efficiently RF power is transmitted through a load, with high VSWR indicating poor efficiency. Explore VSWR's relation to return loss, reflection coefficient, and mismatch loss.

TEST & MEASUREMENT SOLUTIONS

The SI893x’s 0 to 2.25 V specified input range is ideal for isolated voltage sensing. The Si8935/36/37 provides delta-sgma modulated output with flexible options for external or internally generated clock.

D-TA Systems offers the MFEL 1000 portable ELINT data collection solution designed to provide automatic spectrum scanning for signal activity (pulse or CW), PDW extraction and de-interleaving to tracks where signal characterization is performed automatically. The system includes a built-in 6 TB (expandable to 18 TB) SSD data storage for I/Q data collection in both on-site and off-site analysis.

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

The dB-9004 is a custom-mounted Integrated Antenna Digital Control Unit (IADCU). It operates in the C, X and Ku-band frequency range and provides highly accurate RF output (FM, AM and pulse-shape modulated)

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 series of GORE® VNA microwave/RF test assemblies from W.L. Gore are designed to provide the most precise VNA measurements in laboratory conditions, setting the standard for vector network analyzers (VNAs) through 70 GHz. These test assemblies deliver the highest accuracy and greatest time intervals between recalibrations for many applications, including those with vector network analyzers, critical measurements, and laboratory testing.

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.

The dB-9003 and dB-9005 from dB Control are custom-mounted Integrated Stabilized RF Sources (ISRFS) designed to operate in the I and Ka-band frequency range. Both products feature high accuracy and a wide temperature operating range. They can be controlled and set up with a digital port. The units are packaged in a custom configuration with conduction cooling.