The nature of electronic warfare requires engineers to constantly enhance their systems, which often puts a lot of pressure in demonstrating the functionality of new algorithms.

In the past, one effective way to reduce the timeline and budget of producing a prototype was to use commercial off the shelf (COTS) spectrum analysis equipment with the ability to stream I/Q data, combined with custom hardware that would process the digital signals and generate the appropriate response.

Tektronix’ RSA7100 Series avoids the use of custom hardware by combining the digitization and customization tasks. And for parallel testing, our Series 5 and 6 MSO oscilloscopes and SignalVu-PC software provide multichannel capabilities.

The ability to capture signal activity continuously over long periods, digitize and store it, and play it back greatly benefits spectrum management, RF interference analysis, signal acquisition, product testing and validation, RF system design, communication security, and academic research. The high performance RSA7100B from Tektronix outperforms spectrum analyzers with far more limited storage and analysis capabilities. Unlike others that can only be employed as the "front end" of recording because of the limited internal storage (SSD size dependent), the RSA7100B can continuously record and store signal-capture data for hours or days, enabling data capture and analysis to be performed with the same hardware.

Debugging RF systems today requires an understanding of the complex interplay between RF, digital, and time domain signals. RF noise from power and digital lines make troublesome sources without the tools to track them down and correlate behavior across various systems. Tektronix offers complete, single instrument solutions that allow you to fully understand the signals you’re creating, need to work with, or need to work around.

When compliance is required, pre-compliance testing for violations can save project timelines and budgets by allowing you to catch and fix issues without regulator testing. Together, Tektronix hardware and software allow automated testing with built-in standards, and even the ability to define your own, custom requirements with configurable frequency ranges and limit line tables.