Vehicle test set

Aeroflex has launched its 3500 radio test set, a lightweight, portable radio unit designed specifically to test vehicle-based radio systems used predominantly by first responders.

The set allows the user to test all aspects of the vehicle's system - from the radio to the cable and the antenna with features typically found only in benchtop test equipment.

With a built-in generator and receiver, the 3500 operates from 2 MHz to 1 GHz and can measure high power (up to 200 W with an external attenuator) as well as finding faults in antenna, power amplifiers and interconnects.

It performs a wide variety of AM/FM transmitter and receiver tests including RF power, RF frequency error, AM modulation, FM deviation, receive signal strength indicator, distortion and SINAD/sensitivity.

Since many radio system faults actually originate in the cabling or antenna rather than in the radio, the test set allows the user to measure the voltage standing wave ratio of both the cable and the antenna.

A large VSWR can indicate a high return loss caused by a bad cable, connector or antenna.

The unit uses a software-defined radio architecture where the software defines almost all the functionality of the test set from the RF physical layer and up.

It allows for future updates and improvements to the capability of the instrument and the user can add options or update functional improvements in the field without the need to return the instrument to the factory.

Future product enhancements will include spectrum analyser and oscilloscope functions.