Agilent Technologies N9000A CXA signal analysers

A pair of low-cost signal analysers that have a frequency coverage of up to 9.5 GHz has been released by Agilent. With a variety of built-in and optional measurement capabilities for today’s and future needs, the instruments are targeted at R&R and RF education.

The N9000A CXA series has a library of preconfigured test routines, including noise figures, phase noise and analog demodulation. The applications are virtually identical to those that run the company’s EXA, MXA and PXA analysers. For greater flexibility, the 89600 vector signal analysis software can run inside the instrument, giving analysis of more than 50 demodulation formats.

When used on a production line, the CXA is claimed to be up to 200% faster than comparable analysers. It can return a peak-to-search result in less than 5 ms and perform a remote sweep-and-transfer in less than 6 ms via LAN. Switching between measurement modes takes less than 75 ms.

Other specifications include: 0.5 dB absolute amplitude accuracy, +13 dBm third order intermodulation, -161 dBm displayed average noise level and 66 dB W-CDMA ACLR dynamic range. Frequency coverage is 9 kHz to 3 GHz or 7.5 GHz with the N9000A-503 or N9000A-507.

MatLab is available as an option, allowing users to make application-specific measurement, test modulation schemes and develop their own customised applications using live analyser data. The CXA and PXA instruments are the first to offer MatLab at introduction.