W H I T E PA P E R

The Journey of a Signal

Optimize your Signal Analysis Measurements

Introduction
Have you ever wondered what happens to the signal of your device once it enters
your signal analyzer? If you haven’t, you should. Understanding how your signal Keysight’s CXA signal
is manipulated by your signal analyzer helps you make accurate measurements. analyzer is today’s leading
cost-effective tool for
Not paying attention to the effects of your analyzer can lead to mistakes and
accessible performance
false measurements. This paper will walk you through the high-level design of a and essential signal char-
signal analyzer and how you can use that knowledge to avoid mistakes and make acterization for testing
optimum measurements. in general-purpose and
educational applications.
The Signal Enters the Signal Analyzer Learn more at the
N9000B CXA Signal Analyzer
When you connect a device under test (DUT) to your signal analyzer’s inputs, your webpage
signal passes through an RF input attenuator and a pre-amp. These components are
used to scale your signal to levels that the rest of the signal analyzer’s components
can accept. Additionally, the RF input attenuator and pre-amp give you control over
the scale of your signal on the signal analyzer’s display. As you scale your signal,
keep in mind that your attenuator setting can help you optimize the signal-to-noise
ratio (SNR).

If you have a low-level signal, reducing input attenuation and activating the pre-amp
will improve the sensitivity, formally known as Displayed Average Noise Level (DANL) of
the analyzer. But if you have a high-power signal, you’ll likely want to add attenuation
to bring down the input power, preventing overload, distortion, and gain compression.

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 The attenuator and pre-amp give you the ability to zoom
in and out on important details of your signal and improve
signal-to-noise ratio.

Then, your signal will pass through a filter. In the case of entry-level spectrum analyzers,
this is typically a normal bandpass filter. If your signal analyzer’s filter is a pre-selector,
this is a tunable bandpass filter, which moves across the frequency domain, from low
to high frequencies. The pre-selector determines the frequency range that the analyzer
is acquiring at any given moment. It will continue sweeping until it has passed over the
full analysis bandwidth you have selected. As the filter sweeps over the frequencies
of your signal, the signal will pass through to a mixer. At this point, we need to take
a quick diversion to the other input of the mixer to understand what happens to your
signal next.

The Mixer
A mixer is a three-port, non-linear device. As previously mentioned, the mixer’s input
port receives your device’s signal. Meanwhile, the mixer’s local oscillator (LO)
port receives a signal from a local oscillator which is moving across frequency, tuned
by a sweep generator. The third port of the mixer is the output. This is a mix of the
input signal and the LO signal. In other words, the output of the mixer is the sum and
difference of your signal’s frequencies and the local oscillator’s frequencies.

When this mixed output signal is equal to the frequency of the Intermediate Frequency
(IF) filter down the signal path, this mixed signal will pass through the IF filter and
continue on its way. Also, at this time, the signal analyzer identifies the frequency of
your signal letting the rest of the system worry about amplitude rather than amplitude
and frequency. But before reaching the next filter, the mixer sends the signal to an ADC
to convert your analog signal to a digital one.

Check the characteristics of your signal analyzer as mixers can add spurs, noise, or
harmonics – you want to be able to distinguish what signal characteristics are inherent
to your device under test vs. added or accentuated from the mixer’s influence.

The mixer allows the signal analyzer to identify the

frequency of your signal of interest while letting the rest
of the signal path evaluate amplitude. Understanding
the effects of your mixer will help you make accurate
measurements.

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Digital Signal Processing
The IF Filter
Now that your signal is mixed, and its frequencies identified, and is converted to digital,
it passes through the IF filter.

The setting you control within the IF filter is the resolution bandwidth (RBW), the 3 dB
bandwidth of the IF filter. Explained another way, the RBW is a measure of the minimum
separation between two frequency components required to view them as separate
signals on the screen of a signal analyzer. A wide RBW allows you to sweep quickly, but
you will have less horizontal resolution and higher noise floor because you are looking
at a wider bandwidth at each instance of time in the sweep. A narrow RBW filter
takes longer to sweep, but resolves separate signals closer in frequency, reduces the
noise floor, and increases frequency readout accuracy because you are looking at less
bandwidth at once. This concept is illustrated in Figure 1.

Input spectrum

IF bandwidth
(RBW)

Display

Wide Medium Narrow

Figure 1 - An illustration of a wide, medium, and narrow RBW setting

The ability to control the bandwidth of the IF filter, or RBW, gives you command over
what types of measurements you want to observe. Think of it like a sieve – a wide
mesh sieve is going to sift through sand quicker but some of the smaller elements might
be missed; a fine mesh sieve is going to take longer to sift, but you’re sure to catch
everything, the large and the fine elements.

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 The RBW setting allows you to control the horizontal
resolution, noise floor, and speed of acquisition.

Use a wide RBW when you want to take wide span, approximate measurements without
getting bogged down in the minutia, for example quick, general purpose, check-and-go
type measurements. Or, you may want to use a wide RBW when it is critical to
have a fast sweep. Conversely, use a narrow RBW when you need deep dive, detailed
measurements such as trouble shooting or when looking for spurs, both known and
unknown.

Digital Detectors
After the IF filter, the signal passes through digital detectors. Digital detectors tell you
the amplitude of your signal across the time of the sweep. An advantage to a digital
signal analyzer over an analog spectrum analyzer is the ability to choose the data
displayed on screen.

The ADC acquires and outputs a huge amount of data. In fact, you get more data
points out of the ADC than you’d ever need to display. While still maintaining the
accuracy of the signal, you can divide your data into bins and choose a single data point
from each bin to reconstruct your signal on the display. And this is exactly what the
digital detectors do.

With digital detection, you can choose which data point in each bin is used based
on different algorithms. One of these algorithms is the Positive detector type.
This chooses the largest data point in each bin. A Negative detector type chooses
the smallest data point in each bin. It’s useful to use these detectors if you
want to understand your extremes - make sure that the maximum or minimum data
points never pass a certain threshold, given best and worst-case scenarios. Sample
detection is like choosing a random data point – typically the algorithm used for this
type chooses the data point in the middle of each bin. See Figure 2 for an illustration of
these three detector types. Other detectors include Normal, also called Rosenfell, and
RMS detectors.

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 Detectors are responsible for identifying the amplitude
of the signal – how strong or weak the signal is across
a sweep – and can be customized to show you different
extremes or averages of the signal’s strength.

Bins/buckets
+ Positive: Largest sample in bin
displayed
(sweep points)
Negative: Smallest sample in bin
displayed
S Sample: Middle sample in bin
displayed

+ +
+ + + + +++ +
S S S S S S
S S S S

Figure 2. Detector types

The Journey Completes and We Can Make Measurements

At this point, the signal analyzer has all the information it needs. It has the data points
of amplitude at the frequencies they occur, and therefore can display your signal on the
screen of the signal analyzer. You can add markers, masks, change your detector types,
scale your waveform, adjust your RBW and scales, and so much more to get optimum
measurements.

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Conclusion
Following a signal through the path inside an analyzer not only allows you to
understand what happens within the signal analyzer, but also enables you to make
better measurements. Setting the attenuation can let you view your signal at the
scale you prefer and helps you control signal-to-noise ratio. The RBW setting allows
you to control the horizontal resolution, frequency readout accuracy, and the speed
of acquisition of the signal analyzer. And you can choose the detector type to get
a complete understanding of the amplitude of your signal, whether you want to see
minimum, maximum, random, or average amplitude data points.

For more tips and tricks of signal analyzer measurements, check out this application
note Signal Analysis Measurement Fundamentals.

Learn More
Keysight’s CXA N9000B signal analyzer is today’s leading cost-effective tool for
accessible performance and essential signal characterization. Its capabilities provide
a solid foundation for testing in general-purpose and educational applications. It
helps you find the answer faster, whether you’re looking for quick verification in
manufactured devices or demonstrating lab tutorials. Learn more at the N9000B CXA
Signal Analyzer webpage.

Learn more at: www.keysight.com

For more information on Keysight Technologies’ products, applications or services,
please contact your local Keysight office. The complete list is available at:
www.keysight.com/find/contactus

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This information is subject to change without notice. © Keysight Technologies, 2019, Published in USA, January 15, 2019, 5992-3624EN