Check Your Pulse: Pulsed RF S-Parameters on PNA-X

Here I show you how to do pulse-profile (fixed frequency) and point-in-pulse (swept frequency) with Pulsed RF signals to an amplifier-under-test.
And thanks to Amanda Roberts for kindly letting me use her music for the intro.

[@scotstride1969]

Dr. Joel,
Greetings! Can you give any advice on doing a source power calibration in STD pulsed mode? I have a 4-port N5242B PNA-X, and use a power level of 0 dBm with a calibration tolerance of ±0.1 dB with 5 iterations. After it completes the amplitude error is ~0.6dB as measured on a calibrated peak power meter. Any ideas on how to reduce the variation and errors? I can send you more detail about my setup if you need it.
Thank you,
Scot

[@DrJoelVNA]

Sorry for the delay, I'm out travelling. There are two ways: 1) Pulse always using open loop mode, so set the ALC to open loop and do the source power cal and then turn pulse on or 2) from your pulse duty cycle set a power-meter loss in the power meter setup equal to the negative power loss of the duty cycle (e.g. 10% duty cycle is -10 dB, so set a loss offset to 10 dB). with pulse on and the power meter reading average power, it will see -10 dBm for a 0 dB power, so it can offset by 10 dB to get the proper reading for the pulse on time.Then do a normal source power cal.

[@عبدالعزيزالحارثي-غ2و]

Is there a way to communicate with you Dr? Thanks to you for your effort and time.

[@DrJoelVNA]

Sure, you can email me at joel_dunsmore AT keysight.com

[@JawadAhmadKhan]

Hello, how can we measure the received power of the antenna using VNA? Please make a video of it. Thank You

[@DrJoelVNA]

I'll look into that. The the method is to basically calibrate a VNA with power+S-parameter calibration, then use a standard gain horn instead your Antenna under test to compute the range loss; de-embed that from the transmit port and you will have a calibrated wave power at the receive antenna's input plane. It's a little complicated...