Multichannel Vector Signal Analysis with Oscilloscopes

June 14, 2023
With Tektronix's SignalVu-PC software, the company’s 5 and 6 Series B MSO oscilloscopes can perform RF spectral and modulation analysis of multiple channels.

This video is part of our IMS 2023 coverage.

The video transcript below has been edited for clarity.

Bryan Bowman: Hi, I'm Bryan with Tektronix here at the IMS Conference, and today we're showing something that we've recently unlocked with our 5 and 6 Series platform called Multichannel Vector Signal Analysis. When this product came out, Spectrum View wasn't available, and what we unlocked was a digital downconverter on the front end, which allows us to directly sample that IQ, unlocking more sophisticated analysis with it. Alex, here, is going to talk a bit about what we like to do with that sophisticated analysis.

Alex Krauska: We have many layers within our product. We’re showing the oscilloscope software and SignalVu, which is our VSA software. The VSA software allows us to take IQ data from the oscilloscope and analyze it like you'd expect with any digital spectrum analysis. We're recovering amplitude and phase that allows us to see things inside the signal that you wouldn't see with a traditional spectrum analyzer.

Here is a complex frequency-domain/time-domain waveform consisting of both 5G and radar chirps. And we're looking at spectrogram information on the display in two different frequencies with our oscilloscope looking at two different frequencies at the same time.

The AWG is generating these multiple signals all at the same time.

SignalVu is capturing a complex signal, triggering it on one event and simultaneously looking at the spectrum at one frequency and another frequency at the same time, because each of the channels is individually tunable to its own DDC frequency.

You can see complex signals even if they're buried next to each other with different frequency content. What we're looking at here is the Tektronix AWG 700002, which is operating at 25 GS/s, and two channels. We're producing a complex sequence of waveforms each 10 ms long, alternating between radar waveforms and 5G waveforms and operating, in this case, over a 4- to 6-GHz bandwidth.

Check out more of our IMS 2023 coverage.

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