Measurement Testing

Mjr · Site Admin Joined: 13 Jul 2005 Posts: 294

Bob asked:

Mjr · Site Admin Joined: 13 Jul 2005 Posts: 294

From "Jim":

I have experience using products from both manufacturers and while they are both very good, I prefer the Rohde & Schwarz stuff myself. Their faster, extremely accurate and very user friendly. I would either consider an ESIB 7 or the new ESU 8 test reciever, if you only want to go to 6 GHz. The ESIB will perform CISPR, EN, ETS, FCC, VDE, ANSI, MIL-STD, VG, DEF-STAN and may other standards. The ESU should perform many of these as well, but it is new and I am just looking into it now. The ESIB also gives you the best of both worlds in that it is a spectrum analyzer and a receiver. The commercial world favors and prefers measurements made with a receiver over a spectrum analyzer where the Military is just the opposite. So if you are basically going to be testing commercial standards, this is the way to go, in my humble opinion. The biggest con to the R&S equipment is they are usually a little more pricey than the Agilent equipment, but I believe it worth the extra for
the overall value. I also have TILE software and it should preform without issues with R&S equipement.

Mjr · Site Admin Joined: 13 Jul 2005 Posts: 294

From "Rob":

My laboratory has been using Rohde & Schwarz equipment along with their software for the last six years; the EMC32 Software package is very user friendly and has become a staple of the automotive industry.

The ESIB line FYI is being discontinued and replaced with the ESU Series. Cost is the same and the new ESU now contains the FFT Function (Fast Fourier Transform) for making measurements; we have a 26.5GHz on order.

In your case I would contact R&S immediately; they are selling off the remaining stock of ESIB for very good prices and still full warranties etc...if you are seriously considering a new Receiver/SA you should not pass this up.

Mjr · Site Admin Joined: 13 Jul 2005 Posts: 294

Ken notes:

One thing to watch out for is that "receiver" doesn't mean what it used to.
It used to imply a tracking pre-selected front-end. That is no longer the
case, the front end on R&S machines and others of the same vintage are very poorly filtered. On an R&S machine, the only real difference between "receiver" and analyzer operation is in frequency accuracy. The "receiver" will hit every frequency precisely as instructed, whereas the analyzer mode picks frequencies according to stop and start frequencies and the number of horizontal resolution points.

If you need selectivity in the front end, such as for MIL-STD-461E CE106, or possibly an OATS measurement in the presence of strong ambients, you will not be happy with a modern EMI "receiver."