Chapter 1 9
Getting Started
Option 215 Limitations
Getting Started
Option 215 Limitations
Frequency Bands
The PSA Series spectrum analyzers have up to six frequency bands
depending on the maximum frequency capability of the model. These
frequency bands are shown in the table below.
Option 215 cannot sweep across PSA frequency band boundaries. Any
frequency sweep required for a measurement must be kept entirely
within one of these bands. One way to work around this limitation is to
write an external control program to break the measurement down into
two or more sweeps, each of which is confined to the bands listed below.
Further Frequency Limitations
The frequency range of your source/spectrum analyzer combination is
limited by the frequency range limits of both instruments, so you have
to look at both instruments to determine this.
In addition, the digital nature of the signal sources and the PSA Series
spectrum analyzers means that signals and traces are read and
recorded as a series of data points. Each data point on a trace or a
measurement corresponds to a frequency ‘bucket’, which is a finite
frequency range into which data falls.
For example, assume we have a ten-point
1
trace over a frequency range
of 3.0 GHz to 4.0 GHz. It will take 10 buckets to cover the 1.0 GHz
range. So, bucket 1 might collect data for all frequencies from
3.0000 GHz to 3.0999 GHz, bucket 2 might collect from 3.1000 GHz to
Table 1-2 Frequency Bands in the PSA Series analyzers
Band
Number
Frequency Range Overlap
with Next
Band
0 3.0 Hz - 3.05 GHz 200 MHz
1 2.85GHz - 6.6GHz 400MHz
2 6.2 GHz - 13.2 GHz 400 MHz
3 12.8 GHz - 19.2 GHz 500 MHz
4 18.7 GHz - 26.8 GHz 400 MHz
5 26.4 GHz - 31.15 GHz 150 MHz
6 31.0 GHz - 50.0 GHz N/A
1. Although a ten-point sweep has been chosen for clarity in this example, the min-
imum number of sweep points on a PSA is 101
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