VSA Software

Introduction

Once the In-phase and Quadrature (IQ) data is captured, this software helps you to see through the signal. You can examine all the details of the signal. This document notes all the possible views of a signal. The signal considered here is cellular signals but not any specific experiment. For a specific experiment, a large variety of signals are supported by this software - cellular, wireless connectivity, aerospace, defense, and general-purpose applications which includes RFIC and radar. This document is will show how to set-up the measurement environment and how to visualize the signals.

Different Signal and modulation supported by VSA 89600 [1]

  • Cellular communications: 5G New Radio(NR), Verizon 5GTF, WiMaxTM LTE- Advanced, LTE, W-CDMA/HSPA+, GSM/EDGE Evolution, cdma2000®, TD-SCDMA

  • Wireless connectivity: WLAN 802.11ax, 802.11n/ac, 802.11a/b/g/j/p, WiMaxTM, Bluetooth®, Zigbee, RFID, 802.15.4 HRP UWB

  • Aerospace, defense and satellite: AM, FM, PM, BPSK, QPSK, QAM, APSK, FSK, VSB, SOQPSK, APCO 25

  • Radar pulse: pulse, frequency hopping, FMCW

  • Cable TV such as DOCSIS 3.0 and 3.1

  • Custom modulation: Evaluate your non-standard or proprietary OFDM and APSK signals

  • Also supports up to 8 channels for MIMO and multi-channel test

Setting the Measurement Specifications and Visualizing the Signal

1. Setting up the measurement specifications: There are two steps to set-up the requirements.

  1. From “MeasSetup you may fix the center frequency of your interest and the span of frequency you want to observe. A typical “MeasSetup” window looks like the below figure. You may change all the parameters depending upon your requirements. In this case, I chose LTE advanced signal, hence the “ResBW” is fixed and I am not allowed to change that. How to choose wireless technology is explained in the next point.


  1. If you click button 2 from the toolbar, the block diagram will be displayed. This will show all the specifications you have set. The 4th block from the left allows you to select which wireless technology you are observing. All the possible options are listed below. The 5th block is used to control the multiple output windows and their contents.


2. Visualization of the signal: Here you can see in how many ways you may examine a signal. It is very interesting to find out the pinpointed details of a signal through the VSA software. You can observe a total of 6 windows at a time. You can always change the parameter you want to observe in every trace.

All the parameters that you can visualize on a window are mentioned in the below block diagram.

Note: If you change your wireless technology of interest, then the parameter options will also change.


A typical VSA screen looks like below figure.

3. Configuring the input

There are multiple options for configuring the input. You should use the “Input” option from the uppermost taskbar. By default, the VSA software considers one input channel. You may add another channel from this option.


4. Programming with VSA

If you want to run your own macro with the data recorded, click on the “Utilities” option from the uppermost taskbar. You may also add your own mathematical functions from the same “Utilities” option.

Dynamic help

A very interesting tool of this software is dynamic help. To activate this option go to “Help” and click on “Dynamic Help”. Now, when you will select an option on the screen, the dynamic help window will give you a brief description of the option, its use, and how to use it.