2nd hand Anritsu/R&S or signalhound?

[jeremy]

Hi all,

I'm in the market for a reasonably portable spectrum analyser which also can do return loss measurements (ie needs a tracking gen). I found this on the signalhound website: https://signalhound.com/products/6-ghz-scalar-network-analyzer-w-coupler-for-rl/ total cost is ~US$4250. The advantage of this is that the product is of course new, and I'm quite interested in the real-time part because I often work with frequency hopping radios. 6GHz is enough for me.

However, for around $4k USD I can get a nice second hand R&S or Anritsu portable unit. I've heard the matching isn't as good as it could be on the signal hound, so I'm not sure if these would be better. Downside is that I'd be feeding the eBay test equipment vultures

Does anyone have some wisdom they can add to this to help me?

[DaJMasta]

Are you looking for a portable solution?  Will you always have the time/space to setup something like the signal hound?  The realtime SA you're not going to find on any handheld models I know of, but you're looking at a fair bit more setup and space requirement than most of the portable Anritsu/R&S options in that pricerange.  Sure, there are also desktop units, but most of the availability will be in handhelds.


If you're always going to have a computer with you and have no requirement for carrying the unit around, then the Signal Hound will probably get you the best performance in the general price bracket, but if there's benefit to a standalone or a portable unit, then they don't have an offering.  R&S has great stuff, but it tends to command a bit of a premium, and especially if you're considering portable models, there are a few more recent revisions that up the resolution of the screen and seem to be a nice increase from the older FSH versions.  Anritsu units are maybe a bit larger (similar weight, but maybe harder to one-hand), but will probably get comparable performance to the R&S units with a lesser price.  In either case, at least regarding portable units, you can get a number of nice software/hardware options to get more value out of your analyzer - most notably in my mind is the ability to have a good power meter built in with an external adapter, but there are many to choose from (this includes the tracking gen, there are some antenna tester models with it automatic, but usually it's an option with portable SAs).  Of course, on a portable unit you can't expect the same sweep speed as a dedicated desktop unit, and you generally get fewer input and output options.

I've got an Anritsu handheld that's a little over 10 years old.  Totally usable and good noise performance, but the sweep speed caps at 10 updates a second, and some of the buttons lag a bit - the UI is consistent, but not all that responsive.  I think the R&S FSH and similar are a bit more responsive, but from what I've seen, at least, they're similar on the sweep speed cap.  Power meter software options seem to be pretty common, but the Anritsu power meter dongles are maybe half the price of the R&S in a lot of cases.

[Ivan7enych]

I've heard the matching isn't as good as it could be on the signal hound

The 50om matching can be improved by adding 3-6dB attenuator between generator output and directional coupler. It will make much less difference between "open" and "short" trace.

[Mechatrommer]

off topic but have you considered KC901V? http://www.ebay.com.my/itm/KC901V-6-8-Ghz-Scalar-network-analyzer-Field-Strength-Sweep-Frequency-generator-/272515452924?hash=item3f732fcffc:g:c8oAAOSw5cNYc1Y9

[joeqsmith]

I have the BB60C but not the generator.  I have a VERY old HP8754A VNA that I wrote some software to interface with to make it some what useable.     A couple of threads on the BB60C may be found here:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/vide-review-experiments-signal-hound-bb60c-spectrum-analyzer-tracking-gen/msg698788/?topicseen#msg698788

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/signal-hound-bb60c/50/


The one thing I will mention is that I had a lot of problems getting the BB60C it to work reliably.   I went so far as to buy a new Dell 8510 PC and still had problems.  I strongly suspect that Dell does not meet the signal integrity standards.  Some ports on the PC were more stable than others.   I ended up buying a third party USB card for the PC and that solved it.  I have been running it with an extension cable along with a USB hub and it has never had a problem once I added this card.   I do have an external fan that blows air around the case.   

There are some limitations in SPIKE but they continue to work on it.  They also offer a library to interface with it if you want to write your own software.  I've played around using LabVIEW with it and it seems to work well. 

https://youtu.be/Mkec-Eyhg7c?t=330