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- RIGOL DSA815 TG TRACKING GENERATOR SPECTRUM ANALYZER FULL
- RIGOL DSA815 TG TRACKING GENERATOR SPECTRUM ANALYZER PLUS
The peaks are various radio stations’ carrier frequencies. It’s positioned at 91.5 MHz, the Baltimore classical station. The marker is barely visible as a “1” towards the left side of the screen. The center frequency is 100 MHz with a span of 20 MHz (that is, the SA is sweeping from 90 to 110 MHz), RBW and VBW (more on these later) of 3 KHz. The following picture shows the Rigol displaying the FM radio band. An SA shows amplitude on the vertical and frequency on the horizontal. Everyone knows that an oscilloscope displays voltage on the vertical axis, and time on the horizontal. One large wheel can adjust pretty much anything.
RIGOL DSA815 TG TRACKING GENERATOR SPECTRUM ANALYZER PLUS
Picture swiped from Rigol’s web site.Īs is apparent from the picture, the front panel is well-laid out with individual buttons for each function, plus soft-buttons used to select sub-modes. The old HP analysers would typically manage 80dB here.Rigol DSA815. I think the Siglent will be better but I'm not sure by how much. What this means is the Rigol display only shows a 54dB range below 0dBm when started up on the default settings as shown in the youtube video linked to above. A classic HP analyser like the HP8568B or HP8560E will use the 'normal' detector by default and this does display a slightly lower noise level compared to the positive peak detector that is used as default on the Rigol. However, some of this is due to the positive peak detector used on the Rigol and the way a log amp detects noise. This is 26dB worse than the old HP analysers of 30-40 years ago.
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You can see that the noise floor is just over 5 boxes down at -54dBm with a 0dBm reference level at the top of the screen. RIGOL's DSA815 Spectrum Analyzer Part 1 - YouTube
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If you look at the Rigol DSA-815 on the Rigol youtube page here: A classic flagship HP analyser from the 1980s will have about a 34dB noise figure with the 10dB attenuator selected and if the resolution bandwidth is 1MHz on (say) a 1500MHz span and the reference level is set to 0dBm then the displayed noise level should be -174dBm + 60dBHz + 34 = -80dBm or 8 boxes down from the top of the screen at 0dBm. I don't think either the Rigol or the Siglent can achieve this noise floor at 10dB attenuation (with no preamp enabled) but the Rigol looks especially poor on wide spans, eg on the default startup screen. The classic benchmark for an old school HP lab spectrum analyser was to be able to achieve an input IP3 of +20dBm and a noise floor of -140dBm/Hz with 10dB front end attenuation. This would be useful when doing IMD testing on an SSB radio for example. Both analysers will have relatively poor phase noise performance but the Siglent does at least appear to maintain low phase noise on spans less than 10kHz wide. This is based on reviews I've watched and also from examining the datasheets for both. If it helps, I've been working in RF labs all my career using high end RF test gear and the Siglent analyser with its large display and superior specifications looks much more appealing to me than the Rigol. But don't expect stellar phase noise performance. For a kilobuck, they will be a workhorse of any lab. For transmission measurements which the TG is good for, the NANOVNAs offer considerably more dynamic range at 0.1 the price and offer vector performance. It is certainly not appropriate for aligning VHF/UHF cavity filters for repeaters. However, again, the phase noise of the basic spectrum limits the dynamic range to roughly 50 dB. The tracking generator is a good addition and serves the purpose quite well for transmission measurements. However, the phase noise at times forces me to move over to the older HP spectrum analyzers which exhibit much less phase noise. The Rigol is great as a general SA and is a workhorse in my lab.
RIGOL DSA815 TG TRACKING GENERATOR SPECTRUM ANALYZER FULL
Even the older HP 8559 plug-in analog spectrum analyzer offers -90 to (at some frequencies) -100 dB full scale dynamic range. The only item I would ding Rigol for is the phase noise which is typically -50 dB full scale. I have the Rigol 815 with the tracking generator and the EMC package.