N1911A / N1912A P-Series Power Meters and N1921A / N1922A Wideband Power Sensors

LXI Class-C-Compliant Power Meters

A P-Series power meter is a LXI Class-C-compliant instrument, developed using LXI Technology. LXI, an acronym for LAN eXtension for Instrumentation, is an instrument standard for devices that use the Ethernet (LAN) as their primary communication interface.

Hence, it is an easy-to-use instrument especially with the usage of an integrated Web browser that provides a convenient way to configure theinstrument’s functionality.

The P-Series power meters are supported by the Keysight BenchVue software and BV0007B Power Meter/Sensor Control and Analysis app. BenchVue makes it easy to control your power meter to log data and visualize measurements in a wide array of display options without any programming. BenchVue software license (BV0007B) is now included with your instrument.

Specification definitions

There is one type of product specifications:

- Warranted specifications are specifications which are covered by the product warranty and apply over 0 to 55 ºC unless otherwise noted. Warranted specifications include measurement uncertainty calculated with a 95% confidence.

- Characteristic specifications are specifications that are not warranted. They describe product performance that is useful in the application of the product.

Characteristic information is representative of the product. In many cases, it may also be supplemental to a warranted specification. Characteristic specifications are not verified on all units. There are several types of characteristic specifications. These types can be placed in two groups:

One group of characteristic types describes ‘attributes’ common to all products of a given model or option. Examples of characteristics that describe ‘attributes’ are product weight, and 50 ohm input Type-N connector. In these examples product weight is an ‘approximate’ value and a 50ohm input is ‘nominal’. These two terms are most widely used when describing a product’s ‘attributes’.

The second group describes ‘statistically’ the aggregate performance of the population of products. These characteristics describe the expected behavior of the population of products. They do not guarantee the performance of any individual product. No measurement uncertainty value is accounted for in the specification. These specifications are referred to as ‘typical’.

Conditions

The power meter and sensor will meet its specifications when:

Stored for a minimum of two hours at a stable temperature within the operating temperature range, and turned on for at least 30 minutes

The power meter and sensor are within their recommended calibration period, and

Used in accordance to the information provided in the User's Guide.

Sensor Calibration Uncertainty

Definition: Uncertainty resulting from non-linearity in the sensor detection and correction process. This can be considered as a combination of traditional linearity, cal factor and temperature specifications and the uncertainty associated with the internal calibration process.

Mechanical Characteristic

Mechanical characteristics such as center conductor protrusion and pin depth are not performance specifications. They are, however, important supplemental characteristics related to electrical performance. At no time should the pin depth of the connector be protruding.

System Specifications and Characteristics

The video bandwidth in the meter can be set to High, Medium, Low and Off. The video bandwidths stated in the table below are not the 3 dB bandwidths, as the video bandwidths are corrected for optimal flatness (except the Off filter). Refer to Figure 2 for information on the flatness response. The Off video bandwidth setting provides the warranted rise time and fall time specification and is the recommended setting for minimizing overshoot on pulse signals.

Recorder output and video output

The recorder output is used to output the corresponding voltage for the measurement a user sets on the Upper/Lower window of the power meter.

The video output is the direct signal output detected by the sensor diode, with no correction applied. The video output provides a DC voltage proportional to the measured input power through a BNC connector on the rear panel. The DC voltage can be displayed on an oscilloscope for time measurement. This option replaces the recorder output on the rear panel. The video output impedance is 50 ohm.

Characteristic Peak Flatness

The peak flatness is the flatness of a peak-to-average ratio measurement for various tone-separations for an equal magnitude two-tone RF input. Figure 2 refers to the relative error in peak-to-average ratio measurements as the tone separation is varied. The measurements were performed at –10 dBm with power sensors with 1.5 m cable lengths.

Effect of video bandwidth setting

The noise per sample is reduced by applying the meter video bandwidth filter setting (High, Medium or Low). If averaging is implemented, this will significantly impact the effect of changing the video bandwidth.

Effect of time-gating on measurement noise

The measurement noise on a time-gated measurement will depend on the time gate length. 100 averages are carried out every 1 μs of gate length. The Noise-per-Sample contribution in this mode can approximately be reduced by √(gate length/10 ns) to a limit of 50 nW.