Philadelphia, PA. Signal Hound at IMS exhibited its SM200A 20-GHz headless RF spectrum analyzer and monitoring receiver for applications ranging from IoT and 5G cellular. The instrument also serves military, aerospace, spectrum-management, automotive, and radar applications. Optimized for performance, flexibility, space, and cost, the SM200A lowers the cost of entry to high-end spectrum analysis while serving demanding production-line and spectrum-monitoring RF analysis applications.
“We see customers under constant pressure to both meet the needs of rapidly evolving signal-analysis requirements while also needing to reduce test time and cost and make maximum use of available test space,” said Cory Allen, marketing director at Signal Hound. “The SM200A is designed from the ground up to provide only what’s needed in today’s test environment and spectrum-monitoring deployments, with maximum performance and speed, at much reduced cost and size.”
The SM200A tunes from 100 kHz to 20 GHz. It features an instantaneous bandwidth of 160 MHz, a dynamic range of 110 dB, a sustained sweep speed of 1 THz/s, a built-in suboctave preselector from 20 MHz to 20 GHz, and low phase noise—introducing no more than 0.1% error to EVM measurements. Its system noise ranges between 13 dB and 19 dB between 700 MHz and 15.2 GHz.
The unit measures 10.2 x 7.2 x 2.15 inches (259 x 183 x 55 mm) and weighs 8.67 lbs. (with passive cooling, AC desktop adapter, and power cord).
Architecturally, the SM200A distributes its digital signal processing requirements for high-speed RF signal analysis across an on-board Altera Arria-10 FPGA and an external PC with an Intel Core i7 processor. The analyzer can be accessed remotely over a network via the PC to which it’s connected, and it also includes a built-in GPS for automatic time and geolocation stamping of the received signals.
The SM200A offers a fully-documented API supporting features such as spectrum sweeping, setting record-on-event triggers, real-time analysis, and streaming of calibrated I/Q data. The SM200A is shipping now, with a U.S. retail price of $11,900.
The company also highlighted the addition of VITA 49 functionality to the SM200A. The standard is intended to increase interoperability within RF systems by providing a communications format that is hardware and supplier-independent. Typical applications for VITA 49 are spectral monitoring and scanning, signal intelligence, radar, electronic warfare, direction finding and geolocation.
Signal Hound also touted the addition of SCPI compatibility for its spectrum analyzers via its Spike software. Spike provides control of all Signal Hound spectrum analyzers using a common GUI and offers advanced signal analysis measurements and displays. Signal Hound spectrum analyzers, including the SM200, BB60, SA44, and SA124, can be programmed using three methods. The first two employ SCPI commands via Spike software either locally or remotely over the Internet. The third is via fast, direct API programming using a device-specific local API. APIs are available at no cost for all Signal Hound spectrum analyzers.
