Boonton Designcon 2015 55 Series Demonstration

Abstract

Show measurement fidelity and speed of the Boonton 55 series wideband USB sensor powered byReal Time Power Processing™. Never miss a waveform! CCDF enables measurement of LNA or PA amplifier compression mapping it to system performance such as BER.

New Real-Time USB Peak Power Sensor

Capture every pulse to assure signal

Boonton 55 Series Demonstration

Product: Show measurement fidelity and speed of the Boonton 55 series wideband USB sensor powered byReal Time Power Processing™. Never miss a waveform! CCDF enables measurement of LNA or PA amplifier compression mapping it to system performance such as BER.

Target Users:

Anyone measuring and characterizing fast edge pulsed RF signals with particular interest in observing and measuring intermittent behavior of a pulse, as well as characterizing the pulse edgeswith a fine resolution timescale power meter.Anyone designing,testing and characterizing wideband and high dynamic range amplifiers usingmodulation schemes likeOFDM, QPSK and QAM for 4G/LTE, WiFi and other applications for satellite communications, enabling scalar analyzer measurements*such as gain, input and output return loss.

Test Setup:

DesignCon 55 Series

Typical Satellite System:

About 55 Series Wideband USB sensor:

Key benefits of the Boonton 55 Series wideband USB peak power sensor areprocessing speed, trigger stability &accuracy.  The revolutionary Real Time Power Processing™ technology features125 times better time resolution (100 picoseconds) than the competition as well as the widest video bandwidth, rise-time and fastest sampling rates.  Multi-channel capability allows monitoring input and output signal of DUT amplifier.Using CCDF, compression and peaks can be measured.

Significant Features:

- Ultrafast rise time: 4 ns**
- Time resolution: 100 ps
- Effective Sample Rate: 10 Gsamples/sec
- Class leading Video Bandwidth: >125 MHz**
- Multi channel capability
- Statistical Measurements: 100 Mpoints/sec
- Trace acquisition speed: >100K sweeps/sec
- Real Time Measurements: no latency due to buffer processing by host PC
- CCDF
*when used in conjunction with couplers and test software
**for 55006 model only

Measuring fast edges and intermittent events and dynamic waveforms:

Our demo box is comprised of a fast RF switch with its control line pulsed at 1kHz for 10 µs with an intermittent dropout glitch occurring at 20Hz (once every 50 pulses).  The input signal to the switch is a 2 GHz CW tone.  The test signal for CCDF is a 20 MHz bandlimitted OFDM like signal driving an DUT amplifier with its input and output monitored to measure compression characteristics.When measured during BER or MER testing CCDF provides an intuitive graphical display in characterizing the amplifier and mapping its performance to BER.

Fig.1: Rising edge of a pulse	Fig.2: Observing pulse with a glitch	Fig.3: Input & output  CCDF distributions to show amplifier compression

Fig.1 Shows the rising edge of the pulse highlighting fast rise-time (3 ns),edge fidelity and trigger stability of the 55 Series of 5 ns/div. 

Fig.2 Shows superior performance of Boonton's Real Time Power Processing™ (RTPP) technology for reliably capturing dynamic waveforms.The conventional sensorsmiss many of the pulses with the dropout (glitch)due to their lengthy processing time when acquisition is halted.  The Boonton 55 Series acquires the signal continuously with no gaps, and re-arms immediately.

Fig.3 Displays CCDF curves of input and output signals and compression characteristics of an amplifier for spread spectrum signal. Increasing the input power to the amplifier starts to compress the rare peaks (0.0001%) initially but as the input power is increased compression will occur also at 0.001% and 0.01%, and so on.

Existing and Comparable Products:

• Replace systems that require crystal detector, a digital oscilloscope, a spectrum analyzer, an average power meter, and assorted connectors & couplings to monitor a single output.
• Dual channel 55series complements the simultaneous measurements offorward &reflected power (Return Loss), and amplifier input &output (Gain)
• Complements Boonton's existing peak power meter family of products.