TSP #37 - Tektronix RSA306 USB Real-Time Spectrum Analyzer Review and Experiments
Вставка
- Опубліковано 3 лис 2014
- In this world exclusive episode, Shahriar takes a close look at the all new Tektronix Real-Time USB Spectrum Analyzer. The RSA306 has an RF bandwidth from 9kHz to 6.2GHz with a real-time analysis window of 40MHz. While being entirely powered form a single USB 3.0 interface, it provides a 100% Probably of Intercept for any signal event of at least 100us in duration. The RSA306 is compact, lightweight and shock resistant. At the same time Tektronix has made its Signal-Vu PC software with 17 measurement capabilities free and significantly reduced the price of other Signal-Vu advanced applications!
The SFDR, linearity, noise floor and phase noise of the instrument are all measured and presented. The unit is then used to capture and analyze an intermittent RF interference, analyze and demodulate an RF FM signal using an antenna as well as demodulation a 256-QAM signal with -65Bm of total power.
The Signal Path
www.TheSignalPath.com - Наука та технологія
Thank you for this video; it was extremely interesting. Also, thanks for the comment about universities buying this product. You are exactly right that students need to be able to think both in the time domain, as-well-as, in the frequency domain. Keep up the great work!
I don't know what I would do with an instrument like that, but I want one, their sales team must love you. It would be nice to see that demodulate some everyday signals like, ADSL2+, gigabit ethernet, DVB-T TV, mind you it wouldn't be much of a challenge for that equipment.
Do you know if Tek have a similar portable USB powered tracking generator product coming out? Or an all-in-one combo?
Great video. Thanks. Did you ever take it apart?
Great video as always Shahriar. Also good to see what this thing is capable of and the software that comes with it, in an educational way... I think the price is great price for such a fantastic piece of kit. I've got a cheapo Rigol SA with tracking gen (
Very good video.
thanks a lot!
Excellent video. I don't think this particular spectrum analyzer would be right for my needs, but I can see how someone who does field work might find this extremely useful. I also agree that it could be quite useful in a classroom where students are not expected to be doing lab quality measurements or where they would need a tracking gen.
Very nice work.
Side-by-side comparison with SignalHound BB60C would be great.
Great video, thank you
Shahriar, Great video as yours always are! This is a very interesting instrument, and I like where tek is going with the SW and pricing vs. features. How does this compare in your opinion to the SA built into the MDO4000B / MDO3000 scopes? The price is approximate to the price of adding the SA to a scope (e.g. MDO4000B vs MSO4000). This makes me think it is similar in functionality. However, the capture BW is very different... maybe different implementation? Thanks again for great videos. I'm learning a lot from watching.
Yeeesssss.... Take it Apaaaart :)
I plan to, in a future video.
This thing is amazing. I want one!
Love this video! Very interesting. Waiting for tear down video :) Thumbs up. I would buy it right now if not those spurious, they are deal breaker as someone said before.
***** It's possible that these spurious are outcome of small form factor that lead to minimal RF shielding and filtering. Or those spurious are introduced by design not to hurt they're upper class signal analyzer market. I guess we will have more answers after teardown video.
However I already sent request for a quote to my local Tek dealer :) I wonder what price will be in Europe.
Put that -160 dBm to the test! Hook up a passive GPS antenna and lets see what it can come up with.
+The Signal Path Blog I noticed that RSA306B model is available, It would be very interesting to see a video about improvements in the new generation model. Or even more interesting to see RSA606 model with tracking generator. I'm particularly interested in a way Tekrreonix implemented VSWR measurement. Hope you will get in touch with Tektronix and make similar video, maybe they could borrow you one unit for video purpose.
Yes! RSA607A with TG is what I am after.
who made the PCB with the different modulation types
looks very interesting!
What a great instrument, I will try to have a look at it at the electronica 2014 fair TEK booth in A1. Place it on my wishlist. Thanks to the nice presentation.
I was looking for the BP filter (wavetek) you used on ebay, seems to be hard to find such a nice tunable filter, I have the E4421B and might need such a thing also -- any data on this ?
This is extremely good value for money and I am very impressed with the fast sweep speed. But those random tones look really annoying and would be a dealbreaker for me. Seems like something that might be fixable in a firmware update? (I am not an expert in this field, I just know that Signal Hound does some fancy stuff in software to eliminate these issues).
The tones at -55dBm were certainly an issue. However, keep in mind that they scale down with the reference, so the worst case SFDR is -55dB. During most of the band, you can get even better than that. I do wish they weren't there though.
TheSignalPathBlog
Thank you for the response :) I was actually really shocked at how fast the sweep speed was at 1kHz and maybe it's not reasonable to expect this to happen without some compromises. If you do more videos on this product in future it would be cool if you could offer some more tips on how RF newbies could better identify these anomalies and discern them from signals that are actually present?
Afro one easy way to discern if the signal are from outside or within the instrument is to put an attenuator in the input if the signal goes down the given attenuation then it is from outside the instrument I the signal stays the same magnitude then is from within the instrument.
I would appreciate you to test the WLAN features of the SignalVU too. Thanks anyway.
Nice piece of kit! Would be interesting to find out if it's possible to get the raw I/Q samples out of it and maybe create a gnuradio source driver for it.
Oh and also: yes, a teardown would be much appreciated ;)
Was that possible?
I am curious to know whether those spurious still come with RSA306B...
Great video. I love your channel. I think you could improve signal-to-noise ratio by reducing the freqency of these annoying spurious "let's --go ahead and-- do something".
is there an osx or linux version of the software?
I'm just asking, I think we can do the same sort of analysis similar bandwidth with a usrp which is much much cheaper
How would this device compare to Tek's MDO 3000 line?
It looks a lot like the SignalHound BB60, which is available for about a year, I think.
SH is 27Mhz BW vs.40Mhz, but it is also cheaper.
Did you test the RSA306 with the latest software version and calibration? The spurious signals has improved a lot.
Great video! I hope this product will force Rigol to slam their DSA product line price by more than 50%. : )
What IS the evaluation board at 27:30? You say you're impressed with it but never say what it is. Could you please provide a link?
Would this thing make a nice toy for amateur radio? It looks a bit like an SDR!
Hi, is it possible to monitor peak in frequency in real time ? (is marker to peak is stays constant even if the peak is changing)
Yes.
i believe that usb 3.0 all are to be reverse compatible with usb 2.0 what that means is that if you only got a usb 2.0 cable it will still work just slower
Any chance of a look at the Signal Hound SM200?
I will.
5.91USD/g, probably difficult to find test gear with higher price/g ratio
I'm sure there are RF cables etc that cost more per gram ;)
is it just a spectrum analyzer or can I use it like a regular SDR too to watch video signals and listen to shit?
Iam lab tech for collage and do like Tektronix but the the poor junk computer we use the are bad part (i3 maybe 8 GB Win 7 32 bit) ? I do like the free software for school use but will the price go up ? But for low end EE class a Oscope with FFT all that is needed. Good video like to see more Thank You.
👍👍
Cool
Can i call it SDR Instrument ?
Presentation of the product:
www.tek.com/product-demo/getting-started-rsa306-and-signalvu-pc
Alan, alias w2aew on UA-cam, is doing the presentation.
BTW, SignalVU looks like a very good piece of software, which really is the added value of the product. That's a smart move by Tektronix, because the chinese knockoffs are notoriously bad at software (except maybe Rigol).
That's expensive FM radio :)
without track generator :(
Damn, More chump change then I have to play with.
I really like your videos, but honestly the such product reviews aren't my thing, since the price if far over my budget.
I like the form factor. $3,490 thats really expensive OMG.
Still a very good price for a 6.2 GHz real time spectrum analyzer.
douro20 Maybe, suitable for companies with good ROI. NOT for regular pockets like me.
*****
Regular people like us probably don't have much use for 6GHz spectrum analysers anyway. Spectrum analysers are all very very expensive and not targeted for individuals to buy for home hobbyist work. If you look at the go-to company for cheap but good quality test equipment, Rigol's lowest price spetrum analysers, the DSA800 series, it's $1300 for 1.5GHz, $6500 for 3.2GHz or $8000 for 7.5GHz. On that scale, $3500 for 6.2GHz is relatively cheap.
You can get a 1.5GHz rigol spectrum analyser for half the price of this one if you're in the probably relatively small set of people needing a spectrum analyser but only having a budget of around $1300+tax and not needing more than 1.5GHz bandwidth. There's also some limited functionality you can get out of a modern digital oscilloscope FFT function at a much more limited bandwidth for less money.
KX36 You probably right and make a good point, owning a 6.2GHz Spectrum Analyser is probably overkill for hobby use, also take into account the type of auxiliary instruments, special RF connectors, and things to execute measurements it doesn't fit the budget of home lab.
I guess the MDO3000 would be a more useful buy for the same price bracket.
The only MDO3000 at that price is the MDO3012 with 2x 100MHz scope channels and 1x 100MHz RF channel spectrum analyser (although I don't know if that is through the RF input or refering to FFT on the scope inputs). The 3GHz spectrum analyser is an optional extra "MDO3SA" which costs around $2700. The logic analyser "MDO3MSO" is also around $1600 optional extra (I only found UK prices on those), so the $3350 base model essentially the same as a 2ch 100MHz scope doing FFT. The MDO3000 is brilliant if you want to spend $10,000 on it.
If you're spending $3500 on MDO3012 to get essentially less (in terms of specs. Feature sets vary) than Rigol does in their $830 DS1104Z, you might as well get the $2650 Rigol DS4024 200MHz 4ch scope or $2971 MSO2302A-S 300MHz 2ch scope+logic analyser and do FFT on those. Of course they're no substiture for a spectrum analyser if you need it, but most hobbyists aren't working with radio frequencies and would need a scope far more than a SA. Anything Tek or Agilent will be poor value for money for hobbyists compared to the newer competition.
I was interested..... until I saw the price. A whopping $3,490 according to the video. That's more than all my lab toys, plus my ham gear, plus my consumer electronics stuff combined. Maybe you rich institutional EEs out there can afford it, but for me, If any tool costs more than a month's income then I will have to stay away and make do with the FFT function in my cheap DSO. That and the banged up 30 year old eBay special that I'm sure is out there waiting for me somewhere. By the way, the current Amazon price is $4,676.44 (plus $4.99 shipping) so the trend is not looking good.
I adore when I see "Assembled in the USA of US and foreign parts" or same when they replace US with EU, that means all is made in China except someone in USA or EU put one screw on case and put stickers on. Why they don't simply say made in China.
There's actually an important legal reason behind this. The FTC in the USA do not allow companies to say "Made in USA" unless literally every single component in the product was completely made in the USA. And since small passives like resistors tend to be made in Asia, putting even a few Japanese 0603 resistors into this product would make it illegal for them to say "Made in USA". They could very well be doing the PCB manufacturing, reflowing, assembly, testing etc. all in the USA but because of the ways the laws are written they are only allowed to say things like "Assembled in the USA from imported parts".
I’m the Tektronix product manager for the RSA306. Afrotechmods is correct, we need to indicate that some of the parts we use are sourced from foreign countries. That said, the majority of the manufacturing is done at the Tektronix headquarters in Beaverton, OR, USA. We build up the board, assemble the unit, and perform all testing at our Beaverton location.
Afrotechmods If they used a few Japanese 0603 they could put "Made in USA", according to FTC, "All or virtually all" means that all significant parts and processing that go into the product must be of U.S. origin (that you read that 51% of components and processing. is made actually in USA, same is in EU) and resistors don't belong to significant parts, but when they say "Assembled in the USA/EU" that have different legal statement (it have more with customs and taxes).
Matthew Maxwell Glad I have someone from Tektronix to ask because word has it that low(er) end Tek scopes are built by Rigol. For Agilent that is confirmed fact because firmware update have .rgl extension and when you open it in a hex editor, you will see that they are full of strings, “Rigol Technologies“. I still prefer to see Tektronix, Inc. on my scopes then Rigol and I still most of my time use old TDS210 over any other scope (I know people think it is oscilloscope from dark ages of digital scopes but I like it, it was my first scope and I am used on all its faults, and no new scope will tell you when is too cold, TDS210 go white screen when is too cold :D)
Matthew Maxwell Please make a model limited to 1.5GHz for $1000 max. That's plenty enough bandwidth. 6GHz is of no use for education and hobbyists.
3400 bucks? I'll give you 50 bucks.
The video is pretty dim...
Too expensive
Now have money to buy but there is no that price anymore(