N9051B Pulse Measurement Software

N9051B Pulse Measurement Software

X-Series Signal Analyzers

Features

• Display pulsed signals in a power-vs-time trace, providing more complete insight into radar, EW, and other pulsed signals — from your spectrum analyzer
• Measure pulsed carriers up to 50 GHz and bandwidth up to 160 MHz (depending on configuration)
• Intuitive “zoom” feature give you a closer examination of fine details within a long acquisition, by simply drawing a box with mouse
• Up to 10 markers, including delta-markers, allow easy measurements of power differences and time intervals
• Export images, traces, and pulse tables for your presentations, reports, archives, and deeper analysis in Excel
• Examine phase and frequency characteristics, such as chirp, hopping, pulse-to-pulse phase, etc. (with Option 3FP)
• Extended Analysis (Option 4FP) performs statistical analysis on large data sets (up to 200,000 pulses) accumulated from multiple acquisitions
• Capture up to 50 MSa with Option 5FP “Deep Capture” – over 100x greater depth than the N9051A

Pulse Measurement Software Overview

Radar and electronic-warfare (EW) engineers often work with pulsed RF signals, characterizing signals in both frequency-domain (spectrum) and time-domain (oscilloscope-like).

The N9051B pulse measurement software uses the X-Series signal analyzer, but processes the data in the time-domain using the same instrument hardware. The base application (Option 2FP, required) enables basic magnitude-vs-time analysis. You can easily view pulses and pulse-bursts in time and make calibrated measurements in both time (for example, pulse width, Pulse Repetition Interval or “PRI”, and rise-/fall-time), as well as amplitude (signal levels in dBm, Watts, or volts).

There are 10 markers available; these can be absolute, or “delta” markers relative to a reference marker. Markers can help highlight specific points of interest on the trace, and read out precise timing and amplitude information.

Radars and EW sub-systems might generate bursts or patterns with hundreds or thousands of pulses. Ordinary trace displays may not be able to show each pulse clearly. But the N9051B software has a rapid and intuitive “zoom” function: just draw a box with the mouse, and the zone of interest is re-scaled both horizontally and vertically.

The application automatically finds pulses, and measures > 25 user-selectable parameters, for each pulse. The results are presented in a table, with a row for each pulse and a column for each parameter. Scroll through the table to examine over 1000 pulses. The user can modify the thresholds used for certain analysis algorithms.

Even more pulses — up to 200,000 – can be exported into an Excel table via a CSV file.

Although similar to 0-span (zero-span), the N9051B makes full use of the bandwidth (BW) available in the instrument. (It is not limited by the RBW filter of SA mode, typically 8 MHz maximum.) Wider BW means ability to resolve very narrow or closely-spaced pulses, see wide chirp modulation or hopping sequences, and examine fast rise-/fall-times without distortion.

File functions let you capture images (JPG, PNG, etc.) for use in presentations or reports. And you can capture trace data, or data from the pulse table (rows/columns), and export as a CSV (Comma-Separated Values) file, which can then be imported into Excel for further analysis.