Vector Signal Analyzers (VSAs) are powerful instruments that allow you to examine your signals in multiple domains simultaneously.  They combine the traditional spectrum analyzer functionality in the frequency domain with powerful time domain capability. This not only gives you the ability to observe spectral changes over time, but also the ability to examine other characteristics vs. time. This includes basic parameters such as amplitude, frequency and phase deviation vs.

As hard as it is for me to believe, I turned 50 years old this year.  What, how did THAT happen?!?!  My wonderful wife planned a very special surprise party for me.  She knows, just as most of my friends and family know, how passionate I am about my job and the test & measurement equipment that I support, use and play with.  With that in mind, she had some awesome desserts custom made for the party!

We’re excited to introduce a new series here at Bandwidth Banter; The Tek Pulse is a roundup of the latest articles of interest in the engineering, technology and science industries that deserve a click. Do you have a great article, blog or idea that you’d like to see featured in our new series?

In a previous blog post I discussed the concept of using the RF input on a mixed domain oscilloscope (MDO) as a trigger source for acquisition across analog and digital signals, and provided details about how this trigger source operates. Integral to this was the concept of the RF acquisition bands, or block-conversion, bands. These block-conversion bands are also central to understanding the RF capture bandwidth of the MDO.

The trigger features and controls on modern oscilloscopes have come a long way since the introduction of triggered sweep oscilloscopes 65 years ago. These controls have evolved from simple edge triggering on a rising or falling edge of a signal with some possible filtering to very sophisticated advanced functions that can trigger on glitches, runts, specific widths, logical combinations of signals and digital data patterns.

First let me introduce myself -- W2AEW.  Amateur radio, commonly known as “ham radio” is a venerable hobby dating back to the inception of radio itself. With roots in the experiments of some of science’s greats, there is a homebrew aesthetic associated with radio that exists to this day despite the plethora of communications methods available to us now.  While the lure of communicating around the globe drew many hams into the hobby in the past, the draw today is generally an interest in technology or public service, or even designing and building equipment.

One of the many virtues of a mixed domain oscilloscope (MDO) is the ability to simultaneously trigger acquisition of signals across all of the channels – 4 analog channels, 16 digital channels, and the RF spectrum analyzer channel. This results in time-correlated seamless acquisitions in the analog, digital and RF domains, and gives you the unique ability to observe how the spectral and vector properties of your RF signal vary over time along with your analog and digital signals.