Speed is a major issue for design verification testing and especially for production testing. Shorter test times reduce time-to-market and can greatly reduce production testing time as well as costs. Keithley Instruments designed its 2920A vector signal generator with speed in mind.

The 2920A is an upgraded version of Keithley’s previous RF vector signal generator. Its new capabilities reduce signal-generation times and enhance signal quality. Patent-pending technology allows the 2920A to support both frequency and amplitude switching rates that are significantly faster than any competitive system.

Also, the 2920A provides signal generation bandwidth options up to 80 MHz with a frequency range of either 10 MHz to 4 GHz or 10 MHz to 6 GHz. It expands the Series 2900 line’s applications for testing wireless devices to today’s high-throughput, complex-modulation, and wide-bandwidth wireless telecom standards, including GSM/EDGE, cdmaOne, cdma2000, W-CDMA, HSPA, HSPA+, LTE, WLAN, WiMAX, WiBro, TD-SCDMA, DVB, and GPS.

The 2920A is optimized for calibrating and testing components such as amplifiers, filters, and wireless receivers thoroughly over their full range of performance at exceptional speed. The generator is also useful for testing femtocells, access points, mobile devices, wireless modules and air cards, and wireless chipsets. Several major advances allow it to provide substantially higher test throughput than earlier signal-generation options:

· Fastest frequency tuning: A new, patent-pending technique that ensures fast settling of phase-locked loop synthesizers allows the 2920A to tune to a new frequency on a device under test’s operating band in 300 μs or less.

· Fastest amplitude switching: The 2920A provides electronic attenuation and a fast-tracking, automatic level control loop to stabilize quickly on a new power level, which allows switching to a new amplitude in as little as 150 ms.

· Waveform switching in a single clock cycle: The 2920A’s on-board arbitrary waveform generator includes a 100-Msample memory to hold large individual waveforms or multiple smaller waveforms. This deep memory, combined with the instrument’s speed-optimized list mode and a sequencer operating mode, supports switching from one complex waveform or modulation mode to another within a single processor clock cycle.

· High-speed signal file transfers: The 2920A offers a direct link from its DSP processing circuit block to an external PC via a USB 2.0 bus that maximizes operating speed. In this high-speed Desktop Control Panel operating mode, an external PC assumes control of the 2920A, just as if it were the instrument’s on-board processor controller. This mode supports the transfer of signal files from a PC directly into the 2920A’s arbitrary waveform memory at 100 Mbits/s for faster, simpler downloading of extremely large files.

Users have the flexibility to create waveform files offline and download them into the arbitrary waveform memory using a USB memory stick or the GPIB or LAN interfaces. This transfer flexibility will be useful for those who prefer to employ third-party tools to create signal files, such as the MathWorks Matlab interactive programming environment. Two additional features let users optimize for whichever performance aspect—signal purity or high throughput—is most critical for a specific application:

· Ultra-low phase-noise option: High signal purity is essential when creating complex HSPA+, 802.11n WLAN, 802.16e WiMAX, and LTE signals. To ensure their quality, the 2920A-UPN ultra-low phase-noise option provides superior low phase-noise levels, such as less than or equal to –135 dBc/Hz at a 300-kHz offset on a 2-GHz carrier. This permits the generation of WCDMA signals with an error vector magnitude (EVM) of less than 0.85%. This option also permits the 2920A to generate 5.8-GHz, 40-MHz bandwidth WLAN 802.11n signals with an EVM of less than –43 dB and WiMAX signals with a residual relative constellation error (RCE) of less than or equal to –43 dB. Just as important, the 2920A provides no-compromise tuning times as fast as 750 µs when the low phase-noise option is used.

· Low amplitude-range option: The 2920A’s wide signal range makes it ideal for testing a broad spectrum of receivers and components. The Model 2920A-LAR low amplitude-range option extends that range to allow the generator to output signals as low as –130 dBm or as high as +13 dBm. In addition, the 2920A offers excellent accuracy, repeatability, and stability specifications.

The 2920A is also a good choice for multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) testing. Users can easily generate and analyze MIMO signals with Keithley’s SignalMeister RF Communications Test Toolkit software and 2820A vector signal analyzers in conjunction with the 2920A. The 4-GHz version of the 2920A costs $17,850, and the 6-GHz version costs $23,460. Orders are being taken now for delivery in six weeks.