Aaronia Spectrum Analyser Principle

Hello dear members;

I would be very appreciated if someone answer my question below, which is probably is easy for experienced users.

I have an Aaronia HF Spectran spectrum analyser and it is not a real time spect.analyser. http://www.aaronia.com/products/spec...trum-Analyzer/

am I understand right about the principle of working ?

1-) some signal comes to its input and it reads this signal for example during 5 ms or whatever the sampling time is.
2-) it keeps the sigal in its memory, and calculate frequency domain values by usig heterodyne principle.
3-) while this calculation keeps going on (because the needed frequency band is wide), it doesn't read new inputs.
4-) when it finishes to calculate, it reads new signal from its input.

So ı can loose some values because of the 3.rd above.

or is it going this way ?

1-) the same as above
2-) it calculates the first frequency value of the needed band by using the signal sample
3-) while it calculate this , it can not read new signals from its input.
4-) when it finds the first frequency value, it reads again from its input and begin to calculate second frequency value.

I used while ago one of those spectrum analyzers from Aaronia. I have no clue what is their measurement principle, but what I can guarantee is that analyzer is a piece of crap. You will not find any good review about this analyzer (other than one written by an Aaronia employee).

it sounds like you need to do a max hold type feature, and let the sweeps accumulate for thousands of sweeps, and then you will see all the frequencies.

OR if you pre-know where the frequency will happen that you are looking for, make the sweep span very narrow, or even "zero spzn" if it has that feature. In "zero Span" mode, most spectrum analizers become "realt time" ones, albeirt for a very narrow bandwidth

HF 60100 V4 is a member of the older sweeping spectrum analyzer series offered by Aaronia. Regarding measurement of pulsed RF signals, it has the same limitations as an industry standard SA.

Unlike industry standard instruments, the Aaronia devices have no transparent control of or at least infomation about measurement parameters like sweep time.

Fundamental doubts about the Aaronia SA performance are indicated regarding the lack of industry standard mixer pre-selection methods. Aaronia refers to a patented method to suppress image frequencies by software means (see German patent application DE19530812). I guess, it works - if at all - for CW signals only.

My personal impression is that the HF60xxx V4 series doesn't work for typical RF engineering tasks like monitoring of RF transmitters with digital modulation or pre compliance EMV measurements.

Aaronia recently released a series of "real time" spectral analyzers which might perform better.

There Logper antennas aren't bad, by the way.

thak you for all your valuable answers.

Actually ı intend to use it for pre-complience measurments EN 55011 and my company had already bought it.
So I will try my best to have correct measurments with it.

Thanks again.

If you have a RF signal generator, start to evaluate the instrument response with CW and pulsed signals to get a feeling how it performs and what's the effect of measurement parameters like bandwidth and sample time.

on using software to identify spurs: i remember a very old HP spectrum analyzer, that was half the size of a refrigerator, that had a "spur identificaion switch". If you threw the switch, the spur jumped arond a certain way if it was real, and a much different step if it was fake. maybe they are dong the same sort of thing, but automatically.

the invention of the yig preselection tracking filter was a BIG improvement back in the day



set up an antenna with the aronia, and learn how to make accurate measuremnts for signal strength on CW tones first. If you are getting good correlation between what your signal source output power setting is, and what the aronia is showing is being received, then you are probably good to go.

Can you download the aronia raw data into a laptop, and process it further, maybe in an excel spread sheet?