Thread: PNA-X RF turn-on time measurements

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	Replies: 2 - Pages: 1 - Last Post: Jul 16, 2012 11:33 AM Last Post By: andyTPE

andyTPE

Posts: 121
Registered: 10/12/10

PNA-X RF turn-on time measurements
Posted: Jul 13, 2012 1:11 PM

Hello PNAX users,

I am hoping to use my PNAX to determine turn on/off response times of a MMIC amplifier. I have a CW sweep setup with the sweep externally triggered by the enable line of the MMIC and measure the output power when driven from Port 1 (B,1). The IFBW is set to 15 MHz. The best sample period I can achieve is ~50 ns. Are there any settings I can change to improve this sampling rate - 50 ns is a little coarse for my application, if I can achieve 20-25 ns, this would really help me.

Thanks

andy

Dr_joel

Posts: 2,369
Registered: 12/01/05

Re: PNA-X RF turn-on time measurements
Posted: Jul 14, 2012 6:36 PM

in response to: andyTPE

If you use the narrow-band pulsed application, you can do CW pulse-response time (same as turn on time) measurements down to 10 nSec resolution, or even smaller (I'm not sure what the lower limit is for narrow-band pulse resolution but it should be arbitrarily small).

The trick is this requires a repetitive measurement, but as long as your dut response is consistent, it should be no problem. You can always make a very long pulse-repitition and so not have any pulse-to-pulse effects. Otherwise, 50nsec is the limit in a wide-band measurement mode.

For the narrow-band mode, you need option 008; if you don't have it, you can probably convince jvall to shoot you a temporary license to test it out.

andyTPE

Posts: 121
Registered: 10/12/10

Re: PNA-X RF turn-on time measurements
Posted: Jul 16, 2012 11:33 AM

in response to: Dr_joel

Thanks Dr Joel,

Good to know I can't squeeze any more gas out of the thing in wideband mode... Thanks for the thought on -008 - I just checked the pricing and I probably would struggle to justify for this application. I can probably get quite far with detector diodes and a digitizer....

Thanks again

andy

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