USB Sensor Reads Power To 4 GHz

New from Mini-Circuits, model PWR-4RMS is a true root-mean-square (RMS) power sensor that can measure the power levels of continuous-wave (CW) and modulated signals from 50 MHz to 4 GHz across a power-level range of -35 to +20 dBm. The pocket-sized sensor measures only 4.89 x 1.74 x 0.95 in. It is controlled by a Universal-Serial-Bus (USB) connection to a laptop or personal computer running a simple graphical-user-interface (GUI) program, which is provided on a compact disc (CD) with the power sensor. The sensor works with computers based on 32- or 64-b operating systems, including those running Linux or Windows operating systems. The USB power sensor features automatic frequency calibration and temperature compensation, and delivers 0.01-dB typical measurement resolution with 30-ms typical measurement speed. It can be used with a wide range of measurement programs, including with MATLAB and LabVIEW software. Its averaging functional can handle as many as 999 separate measurements.