Why hello there. In this video, we'll be discussing what a spectrum analyzer is
and the different measurements you can make on it. My name is
What's up everyone.
The name is Nick Ben and I'm an engineer here at Keysight and welcome to this
episode of What the RF. In this episode we'll be discussing what a spectrum or
signal analyzer is. "What is a spectrum analyzer?" you may ask. This right here, is
a spectrum analyzer. A spectrum analyzer basically analyzes spectra.
Alright, fine fine fine. There's more to a spectrum analyzer than
I actually let on. If you've ever used an oscilloscope like the one that you see
right here, then you know that it displays received signals with respect to
amplitude versus time. Now on the other hand a spectrum analyzer displays
received signals with respect to amplitude versus frequency. Now in terms
of a simple analogy for this very complicated electromagnetic topic, I
guess you could say it's pretty much like comparing the same data between a
pie chart and a bar graph.
Here, we see that Daniel has eaten eight pies, Nick
has eaten two pies, and Ally has eaten one pie. And also here we see that Daniel has
eaten majority of the pies. This can only mean that Daniel really likes pies.
For those of you that don't know, the term spectrum analyzer and signal
analyzer are used almost interchangeably, but there are some slight differences.
Spectrum analyzers display a signal's amplitude as it varies by frequency but
by definition a spectrum analyzer does not measure the phase of your signal. Now
without this phase information of your signal, we wouldn't be able to measure
for example digital communications like LTE on your cell phone. On the contrary a
signal analyzer like this one measures the amplitude and phase of a signal at a
single frequency. If you transmit an RF signal from your device, a signal
analyzer can down convert the signal into a digital signal and the signal
analyzer can display the signal in terms of constellations, spectrum, power versus
time, etc. Basically a signal analyzer can measure both amplitude and frequency and
phase of your signal of interest which you can't do on a spectrum analyzer. Now
let's learn what kind of measurements we can make on our all-knowing signal
analyzer. he main use of a signal analyzer is to measure the power of a
signals of various frequency components like radio frequency and audio signals.
A signal analyzer allows you to analyze your device's signal and circuit
performance in a way that isn't possible using other means. Say looking at it in
the time domain. Spectrum and signal analyzers can make a large variety of
measurements ranging from harmonic distortion test for transmitters, WLAN
analysis, and spectral masks for showing limits of unwanted emissions, to two tone
tests on an RF power amplifier. Because of how powerful a tool a signal analyzer
is, it is practically owned across all engineering labs for design development
and testing of engineer's devices. If you need to see the frequency makeup of your
signals, a signal analyzer is a great tool to have. Also if you'd like to dig
deeper into spectrum analysis, check out the application note in the description
below, but more importantly don't forget to subscribe and check out the
other videos on our channel. Alright that's it for this episode. Thanks so
much
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