Attenuation Control Units Aid WiMAX/WLAN Testing

June 19, 2008

Agilent Technologies has announced several new integrated attenuation control units with as much as 121-dB attenuation from DC to 26.5 GHz. The LXI-compliant instruments are suitable for research and manufacturing test, especially for engineers tasked with designing, validating, and manufacturing WiMAX and WLAN components, as well as for mobile handset base transceiver station (BTS) handover test. Attenuation can be added in steps or programmed by means of a sweep function according to user-defined sweep times, attenuation values, and number of test cycles.

Agilent's J7211A/B/C attenuation control units allow operators to set the desired start/stop attenuation, step size, dwell time and sweep time of each measurement based on specific application requirements. They exhibit less than 0.03-dB insertion loss repeatability over a 5-million switching-cycle lifetime. The LXI Class C compliance allows remote control over a local area network (LAN), and the instruments also include GPIB and Universal Serial Bus (USB) connectivity for automatic-test-equipment (ATE) applications.

Agilent Technologies

About the Author

Jack Browne

Technical Contributor

Jack Browne, Technical Contributor, has worked in technical publishing for over 30 years. He managed the content and production of three technical journals while at the American Institute of Physics, including Medical Physics and the Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology. He has been a Publisher and Editor for Penton Media, started the firm’s Wireless Symposium & Exhibition trade show in 1993, and currently serves as Technical Contributor for that company's Microwaves & RF magazine. Browne, who holds a BS in Mathematics from City College of New York and BA degrees in English and Philosophy from Fordham University, is a member of the IEEE.