New PC Software From Rohde & Schwarz Allows Flexible Generation of Pulsed Signals
Munich, June 22, 2007 — In many T&M tasks in the field of telecommunications or radar technology, it is necessary to generate pulsed signals. The requirements placed on generating such signals are becoming more and more stringent, which often calls for very complex pulse trains. For this reason Rohde & Schwarz now offers the R&S pulse sequencer PC software for the R&S SMU200A, R&S SMJ100A, R&S AMU200A, and the R&S AFQ100A signal generators. This software allows users for the first time to easily generate libraries from complex pulses and to combine them into pulse trains. For use in military applications, proprietary intra-pulse modulations can be integrated via a plug-in interface. The software comes with preconfigured examples for distance measuring equipment (DME), RFID (in line with ISO/IEC 14443-2), and DFS (in line with ETSI and FCC). DFS stands für dynamic frequency selection and describes the requirements placed on WLAN instruments, which have to detect radar signals in the 5 GHz frequency range. Another preconfigured example demonstrates the extensive capabilities of the software to generate radar signals (Barker pulse, nonlinear chirps, echo generation, etc). In addition to time characteristics, envelope, phase, and frequency offset of a pulse, it is also possible to select modulations such as ASK, FSK, BPSK, QPSK, FM chirps, FM, or AM. To simulate technical systems, the user can define different jitters and combine them with pulse parameters. Up to four marker traces can be user-defined and used for trigger purposes. The straightforward user interface allows easy compilation of the pulse scenarios as well as the graphical display of the generated data. Especially the display of the I/Q signals versus time, the power spectrum, as well as the I/Q density diagram provide useful help to quickly assess the pulse trains. When it comes to generating many different pulse trains, the R&S pulse sequencer PC software features an automated batch build function. By using this function, all individual waveforms are generated and combined on the generator into a multisegment waveform. It is thus possible to quickly change between the individual signals as required by means of control command. The new R&S pulse sequencer PC software is now available from Rohde & Schwarz and can be downloaded free of charge for the signal generators of the R&S SMx family as well as for the R&S AMU200A and R&S AFQ100A.