Spectrum Analyzer Suggestions...

[Mechatrommer]

Any suggestion on what is good or not, the best and worst? cheaper, good for money, where to buy, any free to be handed down?
I'm surveying in ebay for SA up to GHz frequency, but the price makes me think many many times.

[NiHaoMike]

http://www.qsl.net/n9zia/wireless/appendixF.html#9

[Mechatrommer]

how about atten 500MHz SA? rigol didnt have SA, right?
@nihaomike, that homebrew is quite nice, googled some DIY SA, but there are jargons that i dont understand. will need time to study it. i remember one interesting jargon... "pink noise"
i want something that shows the inverted "V" graph... dBm vs MHz

[NiHaoMike]

What frequency span are you looking for? If it's much less than the bandwidth of the oscilloscope, you could use a downconverter along with an oscilloscope running FFT. For example, if you want to look at signals in the 900-930MHz range, you could run it through a downconverter with a LO frequency of 875MHz, which would shift the signals down to 25-55MHz.

[joelby]

Rigol do make spectrum analysers, but they don't seem very serious about them - you can't seem to buy them anywhere and they no longer even mention them on their site. I didn't rate them anyway; no tracking generator or vector analyser options.

Perhaps you could tell us what you intend to use one for?

[jahonen]

The good RF guys (and certainly not the cheapest, but you can't go much wrong with these): Agilent/HP, Rohde & Schwarz, Anritsu and Advantest. There might be others but those came relatively easy in mind.

1 GHz upper frequency limit is rather low for RF, something like 3 GHz is more common.

Regards,
Janne

[Mechatrommer]

What frequency span are you looking for? If it's much less than the bandwidth of the oscilloscope, you could use a downconverter along with an oscilloscope running FFT. For example, if you want to look at signals in the 900-930MHz range, you could run it through a downconverter with a LO frequency of 875MHz, which would shift the signals down to 25-55MHz.

sound interesting, i can see some example in the link you have provided, need to study more? i think maybe a simple DIY can do, if..... its simple to build.

@nihaomike & joelby = i'm thinking of building an RF circuit (transmitter and receiver) and i want to know how much its strongest frequency that transmitter transmitting and the receiver resonating. currently i'm trying just 433 MHz, but who knows? i might go advance and in the future want to go 800-3000 MHz? but in the mean time, 433 MHz is what i have in mind.

[Mechatrommer]

any downconverter exampe, that will read 433MHz into 50/100 MHz rigol FFT? i also need to be able to see the strength of it.

[joelby]

Just mix the signal coming out of the transmitter with a ~433 MHz signal using any suitable frequency mixer. Mini Circuits sells a billion different ones - here's one that comes with BNC connectors: http://minicircuits.com/pdfs/ZAD-1+.pdf

To determine the signal strength if you're using a DSO, it'd be easiest to first use a calibrated signal generator as the input and take some readings at different frequencies.

The Rigol FFT is pretty awful for this sort of application, by the way. You could save the data points and analyse them in Matlab or similar.

[Mechatrommer]

To determine the signal strength if you're using a DSO, it'd be easiest to first use a calibrated signal generator as the input and take some readings at different frequencies.

errr. how the principle works? can rigol be input with greater than 100MHz signal and read correctly?

[ThunderSqueak]

To determine the signal strength if you're using a DSO, it'd be easiest to first use a calibrated signal generator as the input and take some readings at different frequencies.

errr. how the principle works? can rigol be input with greater than 100MHz signal and read correctly?

taken from the post at https://www.eevblog.com/forum/index.php?topic=30.30

and

That is normal, a 50MHz scope does not stop measuring signals at 50MHz, it's just 3dB down at 50MHz.
Check out the response graph someone posted in another thread, the 50MHz Rigol is only 6dB down at 100MHz, so will still easily display a signal.

The triggering issue?, well, that's just the nature of triggering. Sometime the scope gets it easy, sometimes you need to tweak it.

Dave.

it is late... :>  

[joelby]

errr. how the principle works? can rigol be input with greater than 100MHz signal and read correctly?

A frequency mixer will take two signals of frequency f1 and f2 and output the sum and difference frequencies, (f1 - f2) and (f1 + f2), plus a bunch of other products like (2*f1 - f2) etc.

If your test signal f1 is 433 MHz and your local oscillator signal f2 is, for example, 432 MHz, the mixer will output a signal at (433-432) = 1 MHz as well as (433+432) = 865 MHz. Normally you would low-pass filter the output of the mixer, and maybe band-pass filter the input depending on the kind of transmitter. The 1 MHz signal would be easily visible on your oscilloscope.

You'd get away with 125 MHz into the 100 MHz Rigol, but 433 MHz would be infeasible. Attenuation aside, you'll have some nasty aliasing to contend with.

[EEVblog]

Attn do a reasonable looking cheap model:
http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ATTEN-AT5011-A-Spectrum-Analyzer-Tracking-Generator-1G-/390110997077?cmd=ViewItem&pt=AU_B_I_Electrical_Test_Equipment&hash=item5ad46d6a55

A new spectrum analyser for under $1000 was previously unheard of!

Dave.

[joelby]

The Atten does look pretty reasonable! You'd think they'd develop new products using LCDs instead of CRTs, unless they have a very big bin full of them they're trying to get rid of.

As a comparison, the R&S RHS3 with tracking generator I have was something like $12000. It's a nice, portable unit though!

[Mechatrommer]

a frequency counter... seems alot cheaper. can it help in RF design?

[slburris]

Build one:

http://www.scottyspectrumanalyzer.com/

Scott

[alm]

1GHz seems pretty limited for a 433MHz signal, if you want to measure distortion/spectral purity, I believe the standard is something like up to the fifth harmonic. But $1k (whether AUS or US) is a good deal for a spectrum analyzer, assuming it works well.

[Mechatrommer]

fifth harmonic? is it 433MHz x 5 = 2GHz++ ? or 433MHz x 2^5 = 13GHz++ ?

[jahonen]

fifth harmonic? is it 433MHz x 5 = 2GHz++ ? or 433MHz x 2^5 = 13GHz++ ?

I think it is ten harmonics (not sure though), so fundamental being 433 MHz, then the upper limit is 433 MHz * 10 = 4.33 GHz.

Regards,
Janne

[chscholz]

The rule of thumb is 5th harmonic (as in 433MHz x 5 = 2GHz++) for broadband data signals with NRZ modulation.

fifth harmonic? is it 433MHz x 5 = 2GHz++ ? or 433MHz x 2^5 = 13GHz++ ?

[joelby]

a frequency counter... seems alot cheaper. can it help in RF design?

For designing oscillators, sure. The difference between the two is conceptually similar to comparing a voltmeter to an oscilloscope. A voltmeter and a frequency counter aren't very useful if the signal is more complicated than a single voltage/frequency that doesn't change much in time.

[Mechatrommer]

For designing oscillators, sure. The difference between the two is conceptually similar to comparing a voltmeter to an oscilloscope. A voltmeter and a frequency counter aren't very useful if the signal is more complicated than a single voltage/frequency that doesn't change much in time.

as i have expected from the materials suggested here. spectrum analyzer is capable of showing all the frequency strength, but the counter only counts and show one single freq reading that might be strongest.

the concept of (f1 - f2) and (f1 + f2), (2*f1 - f2) suggested by joelby and some circuitry and prescaler chip suggested by nihaomike are quite interesting, will need more study on this.... a sacrifice of time to save money...

[NiHaoMike]

Here's a mixer: http://www.analog.com/en/rfif-components/mixersmultipliers/adl5350/products/product.html
Here's a PLL: http://www.analog.com/en/clock-and-timing/pll-synthesizersvcos/adf4350/products/product.html
Just some suggestions for two of the key components.

[ArtemisGoldfish]

a frequency counter... seems alot cheaper. can it help in RF design?

I only found a frequency counter particularly useful for tuning a Local Oscillator, and only to tune the 8MHz reference oscillator, since if you need to measure a single frequency to a good degree of accuracy, a good frequency counter is indispensable. If you want to measure power output, definitely go for a power meter or spectrum analyzer. The spectrum analyzer is also definitely handy for being able to see how much spectrum a given signal occupies, if you really care about having a nice, clean signal that doesn't take up too much space in the frequency spectrum.

[NiHaoMike]

A crystal oscillator module is likely accurate enough. (Most of them cannot be adjusted anyways.) Especially if it's temperature compensated.

Of course, the sure way to check is to divide it down and compare it to something like a GPS receiver.