Keysight 89600 VSA Application Note | How to use 89600 VSA

This page of application note section of Test and Measurement World covers keysight 89600 VSA app. note. It mentions features and how to use keysight 89600 VSA.

What is VSA (Vector Signal Analyzer)

Vector signal analyzer measures RF signals in the frequency domain using narrowband detection techniques. VSAs do not have the accuracy of power meters; however the narrowband detection techniques used in these RF analyzers help them to measure signal down to the power levels as low as -150 dBm.
Vector signal analyzers are spectrum analyzers with added signal processing capability which not only measure a amplitude of the signal, but also decompose the signal into its in-phase (I) and quadrature (Q) components.
Vector signal analyzers can demodulate modulated signals such as those generated by mobile phones, wireless LAN devices and other wireless devices operating on other new and emerging standards wimax or LTE.
Vector signal analyzers can display constellation diagrams, code domain plots, and compute measures of modulation quality such as error vector magnitude.
Figure below depicts 89600 VSA from Keysight technologies displaying constellation diagram, power spectrum, instantaneous power and so on for complex signal generated from wimax compliant device. It is showing decoding of downlink subframe trasmitted by wimax base station equipment. The decoding mentions important system parameters such as FCH, BSID, rates of bursts and lengths of bursts. It also mentions EVM, Gain imbalance, IQ offset etc.

Features of Keysight 89600 VSA Software Application

Following are the features of Keysight 89600 VSA software:
• Can be used as offline application without hardware, Here data in the form of text files as per keysight format should be loaded to the application.
• Can be used with 40 different hardware models of Keysight technologies. It can analyze over the air modulated RF signal transmitted by WiMAX, LTE, WLAN transmitter device.
• Support cellular standards such as GSM, LTE, LTE-advanced, WCDMA etc.
• Support IEEE standards such as WLAN-11n,11ac, WiMAX, Bluetooth, Zigbee etc.
• Support constellation diagram display of complex modulation types such as AM, PM, FM, BPSK, QPSK, QAM, OFDM etc.
• Also useful for radar system analysis.

RF input signal goes through following modules in Keysight VSA Hardware:
• Signal conditioning with frequency translation
• ADC (Analog-to-digital conversion)
• Quadrature detection
• Digital filtering and re-sampling
• Data windowing
• FFT analysis OR demodulator

Other Test and Measurement Application Notes

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