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A new miniature wide band frequency synthesizer has been introduced that operates from 2.25 to 18 GHz, permits 3 ms tuning, exhibits a volume of 334.3cc (20.4 in 3 ), consumes just 22 W of DC power and provides a clean RF output spectrum with an absolute accuracy better...

The setups presented are essentially of two types - thin dielectric sheet testers and z-axis testers. These are the tools that are employed to independently measure the components of the substrate dielectric constant. It is supposed that suitable propagation models may use this information to better predict propagation mode...

In recent years the VXIbus architecture has proven to be a versatile interface standard for instruments from many diverse manufacturers to operate within the same mainframe. The VXIbus incorporates the user-friendly features of instruments designed to operate within the General Purpose Interface Bus (GPIB) (for example, using ASCII-level programming)...

Today's wireless world requires unrelenting technological innovation. From cell phones that take and send photos to homeland security, the demands on wireless designers for increasing complexity at lower prices and faster time-to-market are immense. Advances in electronic design automation (EDA) over the last decade have made possible dramatic improvements...

In order to test high power amplifiers used in today's cellular base station equipment it is sometimes necessary to perform automated switching of the high power amplifiers without shutting down the system to make the RF connection. The high power RF signal must be diverted from the main signal...

Additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) has proven itself over the years as a simple yet extremely valuable tool in measurements ranging from BER and SINAD testing to wireless link emulation and the overall characterization of communications receiver performance. The unique characteristics of AWGN are becoming even more useful now...

Setting new standards in flexibility and performance and opening the possibility for new applications, the R&S SMU200A is said to be the first high end generator to combine two complete digital signal generators with modulation capabilities in one instrument. It provides space for up to two RF paths in...

Determining cross-modulation interference is an important factor in the design of a code division multiple access (CDMA) mobile transceiver. The cross-modulation interference level directly affects the performance of the receiver's ability to overcome the spurious interferences, such as what the IS-98 1 calls single tone desensitization. A few papers...

This article continues the trend of previous publications, 1,2 to simplify the prediction of RF performance of systems designed for wireless digital communications. The first shows the correlation between sidelobes and intermodulation (IM) products. Sidelobes are the result of the spectrum re-growth when a digitally modulated signal is applied...

The term "one size fits all" has never applied to microwave test fixtures. They are instead almost always custom creations designed to serve a specific test application, and cannot easily be modified to meet other needs in the future. This has always presented a problem for cost-conscious designers. In...