Vide Review & Experiments: Signal Hound BB60C Spectrum Analyzer & Tracking Gen.

[Hugoneus]

A close look at the Signal Hound BB60C Real-Time Spectrum Analyzer and the 12.4GHz USB-124A Tracking Generator:

Watch the video here: [1 Hour & 18 Minutes]
http://youtu.be/3txkDU-qy9k

More videos at The Signal Path:
http://www.TheSignalPath.com

[Hugoneus]

For your reference, the review of the Tektronix RSA306 can be seen here:

https://youtu.be/GDcuRTOCj_s

[vaualbus]

Good video and interest experiments.

[Hugoneus]

Good video and interest experiments.

Thanks!

[Hugoneus]

Based on some comments, apparently Signal House will also be implementing the locking USB 3.0 hardware.

[hendorog]

Very nicely done reviews.

Hope you don't mind - I've posted a link to this thread on the SH forums and Facebook page.

Cheers,
Roger

[Muttley Snickers]

I cant even begin to imagine the time and effort that you and others go to in providing us with such excellent presentations, the planning, layout, setup, recording, editing, research and even the time to familiarise yourself with these products, just amazing.

After watching a number of your presentations I would like to formally apologise for not making the effort to subscribe or giving these the thumbs up that they deserve, I will change my ways and might even go all out and subscribe to Dave's channel as well.

A sincere thank you.

Muttley


 

[alterbaron]

Another excellent video! 

Thanks for taking the time to make this, your videos provide invaluable insight into the capabilities of these new SAs.

[Hugoneus]

I cant even begin to imagine the time and effort that you and others go to in providing
us with such excellent presentations, the planning, layout, setup, recording, editing,
research and even the time to familiarise yourself with these products, just amazing.
After watching a number of your presentations I would like to formally apologise for not
making the effort to subscribe or giving these the thumbs up that they deserve, I will
change my ways and might even go all out and subscribe to Daves channel as well.
A sincere thank you.
Muttley

You are welcome. There are many really good content producers on YouTube who put a great deal of time and passion into their work.

[nctnico]

I found it quite amusing that Signal Hound provided an assembled circuit board seperately so you didn't have to take it apart. That is a bold move 

[electronic_eel]

This video is how a proper product review should be done. Thank you for posting your videos with such high quality content.

I've got some questions about this signal capture capability of less than 100µs of the Signal Hound (discussed beginning at about 17:45 in the video):

Does that mean triggering from signals shorter than 100µs?

You say the Signal Hound can't record the short pulses to disk like the Tek to analyze them later. Can't you switch it to zero span and continuously record your selected band of 27 MHz to disk? Why is it a realtime spectrum analyzer if it can't?

[Hugoneus]

There are "gaps" in captured events and it is in the gaps that things can get missed. Tektronix stores more information than it displays. It only displays as much as it needs to ensure 100% POI for pulses as narrow as 100us. SH processes overlapping FFTs (previous frame partially overlaps the next). This means narrower events will be captured, however as wrong power levels. But it also only stores what is displayed and nothing more.

[albert22]

Thanks for another well spent hour.  As usual, very good experiments (specially the SS channel) I learn a lot from them.
Regards

[Ivan7enych]

Thank you for this very good review!

Do you have plans to review Signal Hound SA44B ?

And a simple dumb question, Signal Hound claims dynamic range down to -158dBm, but in the video I usually see noise around -80..-90dBm. Why there's so big difference? Is lowest noise can be achieved only with lowest RBW and preamp on?

[Mr Simpleton]

The lowest number is with pre-amp on and RBW noise contribution is calculated for 1 Hz.

When using the instrument and you do have -90 dBm floor, your RBW is usually quite wide... and the instrument do have an attenuator switched in....
Still I find the SA44B very sensitive and better than most "normal" SA's

[rs20]

Great video. I was considering the Rigol DSA815-TG 1.5 GHz spectrum analyzer, but the specs of these PC-connected units appear (to my untrained eye) to be vastly superior. Am I missing something; does the DSA815-TG have any advantages to justify the equal cost for 1.5 GHz (compared to the 4.4 GHz Signal Hound USB-SA44B + USB-TG44A)?

And what about the PC vs standalone device question? With oscilloscopes, the interactivity and speed of custom-layed out physical knobs is considered by many to be critical for usability. Is the spectrum analyzer workflow typically so different that this isn't true? (Seems plausible to me that there's less "hunting for a signal" with an SA compared to an oscilloscope, nevertheless curious to hear your thoughts).

[Ivan7enych]

Hello,

I've bought SA44B analyzer + TG44, played for 2 weeks with it, and asked SH to upgrade this unit to BB60c, as I was really disappointed with it's absence of spur rejection in real-time mode. Now I have some pictures from SA44B and I can compare it with BB60c model.

1. Here are 3 pictures with the same settings, I connect my Rigol DG4062(hacked) and send 200MHz -13dBm sine output to analizer.
a) SA44 with software spur rejection does a very good job, good clean signal, no visible spurs.
b) SA44 without software spur rejection - awful, the same -13dBm is seen twice, mirrored fake signal is 20MHz lower than real signal, with the same power.
c) BB60c with hardware spur rejection - much better than b), but not as good as a), it has larger noise floor and has some spurs. Also, I don't like that BB60c has much higher noise in 0-10MHz range (why?).

I would say, if you need to analyze stationary narrowband signal, SA44B can work better. But if you need to look at wide changing signal, pulsed or frequency hopping - you will need to turn off software spur rejection (it works well on stationary signal) and SA44B can be hopeless here.

[Ivan7enych]

The same set of pictures for the 100MHz signal.

[Ivan7enych]

60MHz signal with 1Hz resolution.
SA44 phase noise looks better here (+-50Hz it goes below -110dBm, while bb60c is -97dBm).

[rs20]

Hmm, is that phase noise, or is it just the noise floor?

[Ivan7enych]

Hmm, is that phase noise, or is it just the noise floor?

Here is the same signal, with the same RBW 1Hz, but with wider span.

I think it's phase noise. SA44 has only one frequency convertor stage, BB60 has 2 stages, both can add phase noise, as I remember. I can add external OCXO 10MHz reference to BB60c, and check if it makes chart better.

[G0HZU]

Hmm, is that phase noise, or is it just the noise floor?

It is much too high to be the noise floor. It looks like close in synthesiser phase noise, i.e. 20logR and 20logN noise on the (~2GHz) first LO in the BB60.

Also, I don't like that BB60c has much higher noise in 0-10MHz range (why?).

It looks like the system bypassess the RF converter below 10MHz on that span setting. So the signal path goes to the ADC without any frequency conversion for frequencies below 10MHz. So the overall system NF could be quite different here.

[Ivan7enych]

Also, I don't like that BB60c has much higher noise in 0-10MHz range (why?).

It looks like the system bypassess the RF converter below 10MHz on that span setting. So the signal path goes to the ADC without any frequency conversion for frequencies below 10MHz. So the overall system NF could be quite different here.

It does bypass 0..10MHz range. I wonder why bypassing appear noisier than 2 stages of freq convertions and many filters...

On Hugoneus review I see span from 11MHz, not lower, I can't see is his unit has the same noise in this range.

[G0HZU]

It does bypass 0..10MHz range. I wonder why bypassing appear noisier than 2 stages of freq convertions and many filters...
On Hugoneus review I see span from 11MHz, not lower, I can't see is his unit has the same noise in this range.

It's hard to tell from looking at the block diagram but the alias filter for baseband is fitted before an amplifier that feeds an ADC and no roofing filter is shown after this amplifier to limit its wideband noise (although there probably is a filter here in reality). So one possible source of noise is that the effective noise bandwidth of the ADC is much wider in baseband mode (i.e. the noise aliasing is more significant in baseband?)

However, block diagrams can be deceptive. I don't know how much conversion gain there is in the up/downcoverter or how much gain is in the baseband amplifier so I'm only guessing.

[notaroketscientist]

Thank you very much for this video. I have recently acquired a SA44 and tracking generator for use in the HF spectrum and this video is gold.