50 GHz downconverter

Aeroflex has boosted the frequency of the PN9276 microwave downconverter to 50 GHz to enable phase noise testing for higher frequency applications.

The converter works with the company's PN9500 to provide low noise. Phase noise products provide a combination of high bandwidth with low noise for radar, commercial wireless, satellite terrestrial microwave links, and calibration laboratories. The PN9276 is a 1 to 50 GHz downconverter that plugs into any PN9000 phase noise tester or PN9500 wideband jitter and noise analyser.

Because of the IF range, the PN9276 with the PN9500 system allows phase noise measurements up to 200 MHz offset. The Smart Converter scheme in the downconverter's architecture offers a noise floor performance of -168 dBc/Hz up to 2 GHz. Performance at 9 GHz is -95 dBc/Hz at 100 Hz offset, -131 dBc/Hz at 10 kHz offset, and -159 dBc/Hz at 10 MHz offset.

The downconverter includes a microwave mixer and a low noise YIG-based 100 MHz step synthesiser. This generates a 4 to 9 GHz signal from a 100 MHz crystal oscillator phase-locked on a 10 MHz crystal oscillator.

This provides a low noise reference close in and far away from the carrier without loss of spectral purity.