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Diving Deeper: A Detailed Side-by-Side Comparison of the PSA and the PXA

Technical Overviews

Technical Overview

Introduction

See how the Keysight Technologies, Inc. N9030A PXA high-performance signal analyzer compares with its venerable predecessor, the E444xA PSA. This side-by-side comparison includes specifications, functional block diagrams, features, example measurement screens, form factors, and more.

The Agilent PSA (E4440A/43A/45A/ 46A/47A/48A) high-performance spectrum analyzers, introduced a decade ago, have been the standard, serving the aerospace/defense and communications industries in applications that demand the most stringent signal analysis capabilities.

The N9030A PXA high-performance signal analyzer helps you meet the challenges of an increasingly competitive market that demands yet greater capabilities and performance from your signal analysis solution.

The PXA is ideally suited to meet today’s and tomorrow’s technological challenges, while maintaining the best form-fit-functional compatibility with the PSA. Migrating to the PXA helps to sustain your past achievements, enhance your current designs and accelerate your future innovations.

The technical overview titled “Why Migrate from the PSA to the PXA?” (Keysight literature number 5990-3990EN) summarizes the key advantages of the PXA over the PSA. This document provides a more comprehensive comparison of PXA and PSA specifications.

In cases where the structural differences between the PXA and the PSA make such a comparison impossible, the most appropriate comparison will be provided. Please refer to the PSA or PXA specification guide if you need more details.

Side-by-Side Comparison

Simplified functional block diagrams

The PXA architecture has been designed such that it is the ideal evolutionary replacement for the PSA.

Notes:

In this document, terms of specifications, 95th percentile values, typical, and nominal are used to describe the instrument’s performance.

- Specifications describe the performance of parameters covered by the product warranty and apply to full temperature range unless otherwise noted.

- 95th percentile values indicate the breath of the population (approximately 2 s) of performance tolerances expected to be met in 95% of cases with a 95% confidence, for any ambient temperature in the range of 20 to 30 °C. These values are not warranted.

- Typical describes additional product performance information that is not covered by the product warranty. It is performance beyond specifications that 80% of the units exhibit with a 95% confidence level over the temperature range of 20 to 30 °C. Typical performance does not include measurement uncertainty.

- Nominal values indicate expected performance, or describe product performance that is useful in the application of the product, but is not covered by the product warranty.

Please refer to the PXA data sheet (publication number 5990-3952EN) and the PSA data sheet (publication number 5980‑1284E) for more details on the term definitions and measurement conditions.

Simplified block diagrams showing wideband IF digital processing

While the PXA shares the same “All-digital-IF” concept with the PSA, it offers wider analysis bandwidth (up to 160 MHz) with superior IF frequency response and phase linearity, which minimize the instrument’s inherent distortion resulting in the highest modulation analysis accuracy. A more advanced A/D converter and FPGA and larger data memory are employed in the PXA with higher clock frequency.

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