USB spectrum analyzers

[LabSpokane]

I'm looking for a spectrum analyzer on a budget (of course). I am looking to do some signal characterization as well as processing in Matlab. I'd like to be able to run up to 6Ghz, but 3Ghz would be sufficient at first.

I'm considering:

Signal Hound
Tek RSA306A or B
HackRF

Obviously, Id really like to use something like a HackRF due to price, but it's not clear just how much work it is to do this with something like GnuRadio. I'm hesitant on the SignalHound because of the fact that the raw data is trapped icon the device.

Any one have experience with using these tools? 

[hendorog]

It's easy to extract the data from SH - they have API's which are pretty simple to use.
I/Q data can be read using that method, and there is a data export function in the software as well.

Here is a (crappy!) little app I wrote to extract the data from my SA124:
https://github.com/hendorog/signalhoundiq

Someone developed an interface to GNU Radio for the SA44 a long time ago. Would no doubt need some work to get it working again.

[Earendil]

I have a HackRF but I don't believe it can be used as a general purpose spectrum analyzer. It displays far too many spurious signals because it doesn't have a preselector. You can't really tell if a signal is really there or not. Maybe some clever algorithm could do it by tuning around and looking at spurious signals. But out of the box it can't do it. Also it's not calibrated so the amplitude uncertainty is quite high.

I don't have the Tektronix RSA306. But it's spurious free dynamic range is not very spectacular either. Obviously is far better than HackRF, but still not on par with bench instruments. If I remember correctly they didn't really improve on it on the B version. Which is unfortunate.

The Signal Hound looks nice but I don't like that the specification is very minimalist. They don't guarantee too many things. For me it raises more questions than it answers.

All in all I wouldn't buy any of these instruments for general purpose spectrum analysis, not even for my own hobbyist needs. However the Tektronix software looks really nice and is very capable. So if you need to do signal analysis/ decoding and you don't want to spend too much time developing code in GNU Radio / Matlab than it's worth considering, imo.

[richard.cs]

I have the Tektronix RSA306 at work, we use it quite a bit despite having some very nice conventional swept analysers. Quite a few spurious signals but it's very good for the price and the software is quite usable. There are lots of fancy analysis options, some included, some available as 30 day trials.

[LabSpokane]

I have the Tektronix RSA306 at work, we use it quite a bit despite having some very nice conventional swept analysers. Quite a few spurious signals but it's very good for the price and the software is quite usable. There are lots of fancy analysis options, some included, some available as 30 day trials.

The software and PC platform is a lot of the appeal. Do you like using just because it's easier to interact with and pull data off versus a standalone scope?  Or are there other reasons?

Is the software fairly stable?

[richard.cs]

A lot of the reason we use it is for it's real time aspect. We do a lot of work with wide bandwidth non repetitive signals that are hard to capture properly on a swept analyser. Getting data off is more of a bonus for us.

Software seems stable but the UI isn't that intuitive for a lot of things.