Tektronix re-invents swept spectrum analysis

BANGALORE, INDIA: Tektronix Inc., a leading provider of test, measurement and monitoring instrumentation announced significant enhancements for the RSA6000 Series spectrum analyzers.

These latest hardware and software enhancements deliver unprecedented diagnostic capability and faster time-to-solution using industry-leading triggering technology and real-time signal analysis. The RSA6000 Series offer reduced test times with faster measurement speed, and lower systems cost due to their unique combination of measurement capabilities, making them particularly well suited for spectrum management, radar, electronic warfare, and radio communications applications.

Increasing need for combining digital computing and traditional RF technologies has introduced new analysis challenges, including broadband transients, digital signal processing (DSP) errors, and so-called 'runt' pulses. These signals are becoming more complex and time-consuming to troubleshoot using traditional analyzers that are equipped only with narrow filters and slow spectrum update rates.

Elusive transients can cause intermittent failures that are unacceptable in high-reliability applications, and these interferers and hostile signals often overlap in time and frequency with allowed transmissions, so they are difficult to separate.

Featuring advanced time, amplitude, and DPX Density trigger functions combined with swept DPX spectrum display, the RSA6000 Series now enables faster discovery and capture of these intermittent and rapidly changing signals.

“The enhanced RSA6000 Series essentially re-invents the swept spectrum analyzer,” said Bob Hiebert, director of marketing, Spectrum Analyzer Product Line Tektronix. “As the time-domain and frequency-domain worlds intersect, the logical way forward is to use a single instrument and maximize return on investment. Using the RSA6000 Series spectrum analyzer provides real-time advantages and solid swept performance, adding additional characterization capabilities while satisfying the need for a basic spectrum analyzer and a vector signal analyzer."

More robust analysis tools
Improved broad sweep capability in the RSA6000 Series spectrum analyzer allows quick detection of signals of interest. The DPX engine collects 100s of thousands of spectrums per second over a 110 MHz bandwidth. With this new enhancement, you can now sweep the DPX across the full input range of the RSA6000 Series, up to 14 GHz.

In the time a traditional spectrum analyzer has captured one spectrum, the RSA6000 Series has captured orders of magnitude more spectrum. This new level of performance reduces the chance of missing time-interleaved and transient signals during broadband searches.

The innovative DPX Density trigger captures signals that other analyzers cannot even see, reducing time-to-insight by triggering on signals within signals. This is as easy as pointing at the signal on the DPX Spectrum display and invoking the Trigger On This feature. Other trigger enhancements include the new runt trigger and the ability to time-qualify any trigger.

Time and amplitude qualified triggers are unique to the RSA6000 Series, and will reduce troubleshooting time in numerous applications, including radar and spectrum management.

Additional RSA6000 Series enhancements include a 6X performance improvement to the 2nd generation of the powerful industry-exclusive DPX Live RF spectrum display which now captures more than 292,000 spectrums/second.

With this feature, designers can test with confidence and detect very short duration transients (as brief as 10.3 µs), that are missed by conventional spectrum analyzers. This enhancement is particularly important for applications such as software defined radio and radar.

Pricing and availability
The RSA6000 Series with the new software and hardware enhancements is available immediately worldwide. User-installable upgrade packages for existing RSA6000 Series instruments are also available. RSA6000 Series entry-level pricing begins as low as $77,900 MSRP.