Agilent E5052B vs. R&S FSUP26

Hi everyone,

We are planning to buy a signal source analyzer to measure phase noise upto 20 GHz for lab usage. Agilent E5052B + E5053A combination seems to the most common solution. R&S FSUP26 is another solution. Can anybody recommend one over the other in terms of performance?

Read this thread https://www.edaboard.com/thread141444-2.html
Dr. Ulrich Rohde seems to prefer the R&S over the Agilent box under certain conditions.

Thanks E-design. Here is Dr. Rohde's post from the thread link you provided:

He also has a paper (which I found after starting this thread) that compares different phase noise measurement systems in April issue of the MWJ:
http://www.mwjournal-digital.com/mwjournal/201304#pg22

A signal source analyzer is a very expensive investment and it will pay to research this in depth before making any purchase. Maybe you can try and get a demo instrument from both companies to compare performance.

You are absolutely right. Agilent E5052B + E5053A system is above 150k USD. I don't know the price of FSUP26 since there is no pricing information available on R&S's website. I am guessing it would be cheaper than the Agilent's system since it is single box instrument (doesn't require an external microwave downconverter like Agilent does). So as far as the price is concerned, FSUP26 would be the choice. But I am having doubts about its performance. That is why I started this thread. I find the R&S's datasheets to be a lot more polished than Agilent ones.

it depends on your desired phase noise floor. You can get the previous version of the agilent phase noise test set for a fraction of S150K. It may not have the latest cross correlation software though

I work for a gov research lab. Due to some regulations we have to buy all of our equipment brand new.

This is correct, not always do you need -185dBc/Hz at 100 Mhz , at 10 Ghz the noise floor of - 136 dBc/Hz at 10 KHz offset , or -172 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz.
But this needs cross correlation.

Ulrich Rohde

There are some other vendors like NoiseXT , Symmetricom, or Anapico that sell equivalent systems at lower cost. Maybe worth checking....