The Tegam 2510A is an absolute microwave power standard that operates up to 50 GHz. It uses the principal of direct DC substitution to make the lowest uncertainty measurements possible in 2.4-mm coaxial line. Calibration laboratories that use Tegam’s absolute microwave power standards to calibrate RF power sensors from 100 kHz to 26.5 GHz in type-N and 3.5-mm coaxial line will now be able to extend their service offerings to include 2.92-mm and 2.4-mm type sensors. Tegam says the 2510A provides a cost-effective alternative to returning products to the original manufacturer for calibration.

As wireless applications continue to increase in bandwidth to meet market demands for more data, , Pickering Interfaces has introduced the 40-88X family of PXI RF/microwave instruments with frequency coverage up to 6 GHz. The family includes SPDT, SP4T, and SP6T switches and the 41-182 programmable attenuator. These products have been designed to provide consistent RF performance with low VSWR and high switch speed, and they use solid-state switches to ensure a long service life. All switches include automatic termination of unused paths to reduce VSWR effects. Pickering says these products provide a higher-frequency alternative to electromechanical relay designs and a higher-density, lower-cost alternative to microwave switch designs, while offering faster operation and longer life.

Agilent’s 8990B is a high-performance RF peak power meter that measures and analyzes RF pulses. The 8990B achieves a 5-ns rise time/fall time (with the N1923A or N1924A power sensor), allowing R&D engineers and technicians to capture shorter pulse measurements with high accuracy during module design, verification, or troubleshooting. Built for ease of use, the 8990B is equipped with a 15-in. XGA color display that can simultaneously display four-channel results (two RF and two video channels) in detail. It comes with touch-screen capability for quick data manipulation. Users can set, trigger, and measure pulses with dedicated buttons for amplitude and time-scale settings. The instrument can make 15 pulse parameter measurements and marker measurements, all predefined and executable in two steps via the touch-screen display.

The Azimuth RPM test solution combines the ACE OTA compact mobile isotropic chamber with the ACE MX channel emulator to test devices under real-world conditions. The RPM is an automated, integrated, end-to-end over-the-air test solution that Azimuth says is also cost-effective and easy to use. The integrated ACE MX channel emulator enables the creation of precise, repeatable real-world channel conditions such as delay, Doppler, and correlation, with the flexibility to add other channel effects such as shadow fading and noise. RPM creates a true 3-D isotropic environment in a compact form factor (small enough to fit through most doorways) without forsaking technical accuracy. The system can be deployed across the mobile ecosystem for mobile device benchmarking, performance testing, and debug.

The compact S-Series SGA analog RF signal generators offer low phase noise and high output power with a fast settling time. The SGA is designed for general-purpose, aerospace/avionics, and military applications. Its touch-screen interface allows users to set up modulated or swept RF signals. The Aerolock feature allows additional RF instruments to be mechanically coupled. The SGA 3 covers 100 kHz to 3 GHz, while the SGA 6 covers 100 kHz to 6 GHz. A typical single sideband phase noise specification of –135 dBc/Hz at 20-kHz offset from a 1 GHz carrier lets the SGA easily measures receiver selectivity beyond 80 dB. With their fast frequency- and level-settling times of 100 μs, in list mode, the instruments can be used in semiconductor test with maximum throughput.

The Averna URT-5000 RF signal source uses Averna’s protocol-specific signal-generation toolkits and signal libraries to generate and impair common navigation and broadcast radio signals for receiver design validation, testing, production, and support. Complementing traditional signal generation, the Averna URT-5000 supports RF playback of real-life signals that are often too complex to generate. Numerous units can be synchronized to support more than one channel. As libraries of RF recordings grow to cover specific end-user reception corner cases, signal playback helps improve product quality by increasing test coverage, while accelerating time-to-market by cutting lengthy field trials. Going beyond simple commercial broadcast transmitters, the Averna URT-5000 signal generator and toolkits enable the addition and fine adjustment of common impairments to the signal.

Testing of baseband RFIC devices requires an I/Q digitizer to capture and process baseband I/Q signals encoded with communication protocols such as WiFi, WiMAX, and LTE. ZTEC Instruments’ ZT8451 I/Q Digitizer offers on-instrument digital donwconversion (DDC) to provide the necessary 160-MHz instantaneous bandwidth and >80-dBc spurious-free dynamic range for testing 802.11ac/ad WiFi protocols. Designed for modulated-signal analysis, the ZT8451 provides >80-dBc two-tone intermodulation distortion and <–154-dBm/Hz average noise density. On-instrument signal-processing functionality includes a DDC with fractional resampling, an FFT with optimum windowing, and live, average or min/max hold acquisition modes. This processing enables faster test times and simultaneous parallel processing for MIMO applications. The ZT8451 I/Q Digitizer provides the bandwidth, dynamic range, and functionality required for baseband RFIC testing.