Agilent gives you a wide selection of power meters and sensors for practically all your application needs – wireless communications, radar pulse measurements, components testing and more. We want to help you make better measurements—with the recommended equipment in less time, so we’ve lined up an array of resources in the form of application notes, technical notes and demo guides just for you.

Noise figure is an important figure-of-merit that describes the amount of excess noise present in a component or system. Minimizing noise figure reduces system impairments that result from noise, such as degraded voice quality of cell-phone calls, or decreased detection range of radar systems. Measurement accuracy is very important, in both R&D and manufacturing environments. In R&D, better noise figure accuracy means that there will be a better correlation between simulations and measurements, helping designers refine circuit models faster. In manufacturing, improved accuracy provides better correlation among multiple test stations, minimizing rework and increasing test throughput. Higher accuracy also allows better device specifications, yielding more competitive products.

Abstract:

RF system design is a notoriously complex and challenging endeavor, made even more so by today’s stringent time-to-market requirements. Meeting these requirements places increasing pressure on system integrators to speed the system-design process wherever possible. One viable option for addressing these concerns lies in the ability to evaluate real circuit-level designs from design houses/component vendors within the system context, early in the design process and prior to the availability of a physical hardware prototype.

Correlation-based modeling refers to the correlation that is present between samples. This can be correlation in the time, frequency, or spatial domains. For channel modeling purposes, it generally includes all three.

When it comes to securing broadband stimulus funds, network providers are currently faced with some fairly uncertain circumstances. Challenged with navigating through the uncertain fund allocation process, operators continue to struggle with determining how to write a convincing and winning application and choosing the right solution, technology and vendor to best suit their specific needs.

X-parameters represent a new category of nonlinear network parameters for high-frequency design and are used for characterizing the amplitudes and relative phase of harmonics generated by the nonlinear behavior of components. Developed and introduced by Agilent Technologies, X-parameters are applicable to both large-signal and small-signal conditions, and for linear and nonlinear components. They correctly characterize impedance mismatches and frequency mixing behavior to allow accurate simulation of cascaded nonlinear X-parameter blocks (e.g., amplifiers and mixers), in wireless design. X-parameters play a key role in the development of active devices like the power amplifier (PA) and mixers—critical components in today’s wireless designs.

The Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS), the successor to GSM, is steadily increasing its penetration of the world’s wireless communications markets, and is likely over time to become the primary standard used by not just the current 85% wireless carriers, but by virtually all of them. Its most promising emerging enhancement, Long-Term Evolution (LTE), has moved further along in the standards-setting process and on to the path of initial deployment.