Tektronix highlighted its new RSA6100A Series real-time spectrum analyzers at this year's RWS show in Long Beach, CA. Featuring the revolutionary DPX™ spectrum display, these spectrum analyzers offer an intuitive live color view of signal transients changing over time in the frequency domain, giving immediate confidence in the stability of a design, or instantly displaying a fault when it occurs. This live display of transients is impossible with other signal analyzers. Once a problem is discovered with DPX, the RSA6100A series can be set to trigger on the event, capture a continuous time record of changing RF events and perform time-correlated analysis in all domains. The functionality of a wide-band vector signal analyzer, a spectrum analyzer and the unique trigger-capture-analyze capability of a real-time spectrum analyzer exists all in a single package.

The patented DPX spectrum processing engine brings live analysis of transient events to spectrum analyzers. Performing > 48,000 frequency transforms per second, transients as brief as 24 μs in length are displayed in the frequency domain. This is a 1000-fold improvement over swept analysis techniques. Events can be color coded by rate of occurrence onto a bit-mapped display, providing unparalleled insight into transient signal behavior.