It always amazes me on the depth of knowledge that you have on these subjects. It just one of those subjects that has complexities that i could never dream of. Probably my most liked youtube poster.
The RIGOL DSA1030A-TG3 video presented by Shahnar is the best demo and instructional video I've seen in my 50+ years in electronics. Too bad this unit wasn't available to me all those years ago.
I was looking for an overview of Spectrum Analysers and their capabilities, this video with experiments is excellent and answered all my questions. Thank you Shahriar for creating this video.
You have some of the best and most thorough videos I have ever seen. I've had many people tell me that Rigol's are garbage measurement tools as oscilloscopes and spectrum analyzers which made me not want to get one. After seeing your video's showing the true capabilities both pro's and con's I must say they aren't all that bad for a hobbyist like myself. Thank you so much for the great video and keep up the amazing video's on explaining the tools we use regularly as electronic enthusiasts.
I'm just a hobbyist (and one of "those DC guys"), HF stuff is just magic to me. I immensly enjoy your videos, so much interesting stuff. Wikipedia is a constand companion while your videos are running, and I might even have learnd one thing (two would be exaggerated...). I really appreciate, what you are doing for us. We get to see stuff and devices we might not get in contact with otherwise. You take your time and really make your videos worth watching (I mean that in a good way).
The experiments your design for these videos are fantastic! Tons of golden knowledge nuggets and it makes it fun to learn about the topic when you can see it in proper context.
Thanks a nice discussion on both using the DSA1030 and using spectrum analysers in general I'll see how applicable it is when my DSA815TG arrives. Cheers
You have to be careful to distinguish the difference between a signal's "harmonic distortion" (which means having spurious tones, or harmonics) and a signal's "phase noise" which represent unwanted random jitter in the signal. A signal which has poor harmonic distortion can still have low enough phase noise to do low-phase-noise measurements. The DSA's internal synthesizer has a good enough phase noise to enable this type of measurements even though it has poor THD.
Intersting to see all the functions that are provided by Rigol spectrum analysers. Spectrum analysers all have very similar functions, so it was interesting to see the general functions that are available.
Great video, enjoyed watching and learning have ordered a Rigol DSA815 TG it was good to get an insight into the operation and features of Rigol Spectrum analyzers many thanks, look forward to seeing more of your videos....
I've been calibrating spectrum analyzers for the past 5 years but I've never calibrated a Rigol brand. It's good learn to learn more about spectrum analyzers.
Most of this is over my head but it is very interesting to learn about things I never had considered before. Keep up the good work with the videos and I will keep watching and learning! :)
wow! Shahriar, while I have so far never given patreon support to people who do product reviews, this "review" was ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE beyond the usual "feature rundown" format of typical product reviews... in fact I would characterize it as an instructional video demonstrating the practical use of a spectrum analyzer. This absolutely *is* the kind of instructional material that I enjoy providing financial support for, and I am happy to throw a few bucks into the kitty to allow you to continue with this kind of instructional content. I hope it helps you to continue. Best regards...
how about some rf theory and what you do at work.. I want algorithms that make my eyes water and put me to sleep I'm a first engineer, surrounded by Iranian academics.. I value education also.
Hi Shahriar! Great Video. Great Experiments. I wish I could "like" it twice.. ;-) I also wish you'd make a more in-depth video on the frequency content of high speed serial signals or maybe a general tutorial on high speed serial encoding (8b/10b etc.). That would be awesome!
Shahriar - don't know if you've updated the firmware on your 1030A-TG lately but the newest Version 18 FW (Sep 15) adds VSWR and Return Loss functionality along with fixing the bug that wouldn't allow you to invert the print function so you don't waste a lot of ink printing a screen capture. I was bummed when I got my analyzer along with the VSWR bridge only to find out that function was not implemented (as it was in the 815 series) and was pleasantly surprised to find that they added it. Thanks for all the great videos! Dino
+The Signal Path Blog BTW, for some reason the "Firmware Robot" that normally provides update requests wasn't answering my request for the latest 1030 FW last week so you may have to get it directly from the guys at Rigol (or I can send it to you direct if need be, it's a small file, only 2.3MB).
Not sure if this is relevant to your SA but worth a look. it seems the rigiol has a hardware freq counter that is not reliant on the digitised screen plot search youtube for DSA-815 Spectrum Analyzer - Frequency Measurements - Revisited
Hi, great video as always. One question when you measured the input return from the band pass filter should you terminate the output of the filter also?
Was this supposed to end at 1:03? The suspense is killing me. :) Some of the comments make me think this video got 29 minutes chopped off the end. Great videos.
If the purity of the specan's oscillator is -8xdBc/Hz, how is it able to measure the oscillator at -1xxdBc/Hz? Your videos are great, I get excited when I see I can spend >1h watching them :) Keep it up. Also lab envy++
i saw a input impedance option 50 and 75 ohm in menu. but i think the real input impedance of SA is just 50 ohm and if we choose 75 ohm input it only calculates values. am i right, can you explain about it ?
I think the analyser spec was quoted as -88dBc/Hz at 10kHz. This is very poor phase noise. A lot depends on the loop bandwidth of the Rigol synthesiser but you could guess its phase noise to be about -108dBc/Hz at 100kHz. i.e. 20dB better than at 10kHz. I'd expect the 600MHz Miteq to have extremely good phase noise at a 100kHz offset. Ballpark -130dBc/Hz so this measurement was limited by the very poor phase noise performance of the Rigol and not the Miteq.
Interesting review but I don't agree with some of your comments in the phase noise section. I've never used one of the 600MHz Miteq sources but Miteq would deserve an award for incompetence if they only achieved -107dBc/Hz at 100kHz offset for a 600MHz oscillator. That phase noise is very high! I suspect you are just measuring the phase noise of the Rigol at 100kHz offset. I would expect that if you weasured the Miteq on an Agilent E5052A it would show better than -130dBc/Hz at 100kHz offset.
God.. that -148dBm noise floor... I was amazed how small signals you can measure with a instrument that costs only ~5500$ I mean that's something that was previously only for instruments around 30.000$and more :P
Can someone comment on the phase noise measurement? How do you know the -107dBm/Hz at 100kHz offset was the phase noise of the Miteq oscillator and not affected by the Rigol DSA's phase noise? Shahriar commented that "You can't measure the phase noise of anything that has a better phase noise of this instrument." 1
+Cameron Boone I measured the phase noise of the Miteq module separately. The measured phase noise on the Rigol is very close to the Miteq phase noise. In this case, there is a small contribution from the Rigol on the overall phase noise.
+The Signal Path Blog Thanks for responding! When you say you measured the Miteq module separately do you mean the measurement shown in the video no the rigol, or did you measure it separately with another SA that has better phase noise performance? Does the phase noise of a DSA typically roll off at 20dB/decade, meaning would the Rigol's phase noise be about -108dBc/Hz at 100kHz and then about -128dBc/Hz at 1MHz away?
+Cameron Boone I measured the Miteq with an Agilent PXA which has far superior phase noise. The exact details of the phase noise I do not remember anymore as it was a while back. But I suggest you watch the latest review of the Rigol 7.5GHz spectrum analyzer I did recently, that one I measure with a much better source and you can clearly see the phase noise profile of the SA.
Thanks for the video. I have a question and I haven't watched the entire video yet so I apologize if this was mentioned in it. As shown in your video, with a CW, going from a larger to smaller RBW lowers the noise floor but the power of the CW remains constant and the C/N increases. When I look at a digital PSK modulated signal and do the same thing, the noise floor decreases as expected however the modulated carrier power decreases by the same amount and the C/N remains constant. Why is this?
CW is of ideal BW of 0 and should be concentrated within the filter BW regardless of a reduction of BW. PSK modulated signals on the other hand have its power spread across a BW and hence a reduction in RBW would reduce the energy measured for each point in the sweep.
TheSignalPathBlog Even though they have just 8 bit their effective dynamic range is better than that due to oversampling\averaging. For small signals you can make yourself a 50MHz LNA for $30.
Very informative and helpful video. Thanks.. Question.. I have an HP8566B SA but it has no tracking gen. If I wanted to look at the frequency response of a fixed frequency mechanical or lattice filter, Can't I simply use 2 stable signal generators instead? If so, what is the method for this test. I have a number of HP 8640B sig gens that I can use. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!!!!!!
Better, All that information is largely relevant. But i am just a programmer and do this stuff as a hobby. So as much as this is a mind fuck for me. I love it !
I'd have to vote for better, due to Shahriar's tempo. I find Dave's tempo to be far too fast to follow, and I do believe that you could say he's a little jumpy around key points. It's just my opinion, and I like Dave's videos, but it's a shame that his hectic presentations can cause the learning potential to fall. Keep up the great work Shahriar!
Hi Shahriar, this is great! I did buy the DSA 815 TG and noticed that the output signal is not great. Here is a link to an EEVBlog forum post I did. I am not an engineer, so I hope I am not making a fundamental error in my observations... www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/rigol-dsa-815-tracking-generator-distortion/
I think you mean "black" magic as most RF folks will tell you. There are quite a few of the best and brightest will tell you that not everything about RF is fully understood.
Nice review. But, and sorry to be a connector snob, but please don't rotate the body of cal-kit components around like that (e.g. 1:21:15). I know you're not doing metrology-grade measurement here but that's really, really bad practice - the only thing that should rotated is the nut, the pin should never be rotated in the collet. I'm sure you know all this, but it made me cringe so much I had to say something!
Your rearrangements are a little weird :P A chicken on some odd pedestal ... 2 agilents sitting in the corner, a huge base microscope with a 87v ... and certainly the DSA1030 sitting on top of some nondescript (because i don't know :P) And a glass of wine to top it off! All goes well with your hair shahriar :P Don't forget the DM3068 teardown! Not to forget that lonely looking Weller (WESD51?) sitting below the chicken
It always amazes me on the depth of knowledge that you have on these subjects. It just one of those subjects that has complexities that i could never dream of. Probably my most liked youtube poster.
The RIGOL DSA1030A-TG3 video presented by Shahnar is the best demo and instructional video I've seen in my 50+ years in electronics. Too bad this unit wasn't available to me all those years ago.
I am a mm-Wave ASIC designer myself and it is true that the art is often referred to as black magic! There is surely always more to learn.
I was looking for an overview of Spectrum Analysers and their capabilities, this video with experiments is excellent and answered all my questions. Thank you Shahriar for creating this video.
I love the way you approach a product review. The experiments are great!
Oh my god what a great video. So detailed and thorough. I love it. I don't know why your videos don't get nominated for any emmey's.
You have some of the best and most thorough videos I have ever seen. I've had many people tell me that Rigol's are garbage measurement tools as oscilloscopes and spectrum analyzers which made me not want to get one. After seeing your video's showing the true capabilities both pro's and con's I must say they aren't all that bad for a hobbyist like myself. Thank you so much for the great video and keep up the amazing video's on explaining the tools we use regularly as electronic enthusiasts.
I'm just a hobbyist (and one of "those DC guys"), HF stuff is just magic to me. I immensly enjoy your videos, so much interesting stuff. Wikipedia is a constand companion while your videos are running, and I might even have learnd one thing (two would be exaggerated...).
I really appreciate, what you are doing for us. We get to see stuff and devices we might not get in contact with otherwise. You take your time and really make your videos worth watching (I mean that in a good way).
Thank you! I am very happy to see people enjoying my videos.
The experiments your design for these videos are fantastic! Tons of golden knowledge nuggets and it makes it fun to learn about the topic when you can see it in proper context.
Yes, I am also very happy that TH-cam allows me to upload long videos in one file! It was a nightmare before.
so glad you have long videos now, instead of me having to flip 20 different videos to find where I was... keep up the good work! awesome videos.
Wonderful video. I enjoyed the VSWR measurement portion. I was not aware of using a tracking generator to see bandwidth roll-off.
Thanks a nice discussion on both using the DSA1030 and using spectrum analysers in general I'll see how applicable it is when my DSA815TG arrives.
Cheers
You have to be careful to distinguish the difference between a signal's "harmonic distortion" (which means having spurious tones, or harmonics) and a signal's "phase noise" which represent unwanted random jitter in the signal. A signal which has poor harmonic distortion can still have low enough phase noise to do low-phase-noise measurements. The DSA's internal synthesizer has a good enough phase noise to enable this type of measurements even though it has poor THD.
Intersting to see all the functions that are provided by Rigol spectrum analysers. Spectrum analysers all have very similar functions, so it was interesting to see the general functions that are available.
Just picked mine up today. Looking forward to getting it onto the bench...
Thanks for making a very detailed video about the Rigol DSA1030A.
Great video, enjoyed watching and learning have ordered a Rigol DSA815 TG it was good to get an insight into the operation and features of Rigol Spectrum analyzers many thanks, look forward to seeing more of your videos....
Superb video, you are a natural presenter, it was highly instructive and also very enjoyable. Thank you.
What a legendary lecturer！
Thank you to everyone involved
I've been calibrating spectrum analyzers for the past 5 years but I've never calibrated a Rigol brand. It's good learn to learn more about spectrum analyzers.
Very interesting and in-depth lab tutorial !
Most of this is over my head but it is very interesting to learn about things I never had considered before. Keep up the good work with the videos and I will keep watching and learning! :)
I can sympathize. The equipment is also fairly expensive here. I usually buy things broken from eBay and repair/calibrate them.
There is a big difference between dB and dBm. dBm is a measure of power into a specific load. In this case the load is 50Ohms.
You, Sir, are a great teacher. Well done!
I am learning a lot from your videos, thanks! You are extremely clear and knowledgeable! An impressive bundle of molecules!
How on earth you Desk looks so Clean? No components, no wire, no mess?
wow! Shahriar, while I have so far never given patreon support to people who do product reviews, this "review" was ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE beyond the usual "feature rundown" format of typical product reviews... in fact I would characterize it as an instructional video demonstrating the practical use of a spectrum analyzer. This absolutely *is* the kind of instructional material that I enjoy providing financial support for, and I am happy to throw a few bucks into the kitty to allow you to continue with this kind of instructional content. I hope it helps you to continue. Best regards...
Dean Neumann Thanks! I hope you also enjoy my other reviews.
how about some rf theory and what you do at work..
I want algorithms that make my eyes water and put me to sleep
I'm a first engineer, surrounded by Iranian academics.. I value education also.
Hi Shahriar! Great Video. Great Experiments. I wish I could "like" it twice.. ;-)
I also wish you'd make a more in-depth video on the frequency content of high speed serial signals or maybe a general tutorial on high speed serial encoding (8b/10b etc.). That would be awesome!
Shahriar - don't know if you've updated the firmware on your 1030A-TG lately but the newest Version 18 FW (Sep 15) adds VSWR and Return Loss functionality along with fixing the bug that wouldn't allow you to invert the print function so you don't waste a lot of ink printing a screen capture. I was bummed when I got my analyzer along with the VSWR bridge only to find out that function was not implemented (as it was in the 815 series) and was pleasantly surprised to find that they added it. Thanks for all the great videos! Dino
+Dino Papas Thanks, I will check it out.
+The Signal Path Blog BTW, for some reason the "Firmware Robot" that normally provides update requests wasn't answering my request for the latest 1030 FW last week so you may have to get it directly from the guys at Rigol (or I can send it to you direct if need be, it's a small file, only 2.3MB).
Thank you! You are too kind.
13 years of equipment buying, fixing and trading. :)
Not sure if this is relevant to your SA but worth a look. it seems the rigiol has a hardware freq counter that is not reliant on the digitised screen plot
search youtube for
DSA-815 Spectrum Analyzer - Frequency Measurements - Revisited
Hi, great video as always. One question when you measured the input return from the band pass filter should you terminate the output of the filter also?
Ah yes, an old Signal path. Before Shahriar had enough test equipment to build a house with :)
Shahriar very good video =)
How do I now the amplitude voltage of a signal that have 20dbm or 20db ?
I was missing your videos =P
Another great video. Thanks again.
I thought it was very informative. Thank You
Brilliant I have learnt a lot from watching your video certainly on how to measure small signals at -, 90dBn
a glass of red on the table. i like this guy's style
This video helped me out alot thanks for uploading and being clear. Awesome!
Was this supposed to end at 1:03? The suspense is killing me. :) Some of the comments make me think this video got 29 minutes chopped off the end.
Great videos.
Ho there, I couldn't see if you had terminated the filter in 50 ohms when you did the S11 amplitude measurement. Was it terminated?
Superb, really great job
Have you looked inside ? What do they use for the 1st oscillator ?
If the purity of the specan's oscillator is -8xdBc/Hz, how is it able to measure the oscillator at -1xxdBc/Hz?
Your videos are great, I get excited when I see I can spend >1h watching them :) Keep it up.
Also lab envy++
Great video.
Screen is very blurry... did you have focus or over exposure problem?
i saw a input impedance option 50 and 75 ohm in menu. but i think the real input impedance of SA is just 50 ohm and if we choose 75 ohm input it only calculates values. am i right, can you explain about it ?
Great video
very good video, gain a lot of knowledge, thanks!
Very Nice Demo.
I think the analyser spec was quoted as -88dBc/Hz at 10kHz. This is very poor phase noise. A lot depends on the loop bandwidth of the Rigol synthesiser but you could guess its phase noise to be about -108dBc/Hz at 100kHz. i.e. 20dB better than at 10kHz.
I'd expect the 600MHz Miteq to have extremely good phase noise at a 100kHz offset. Ballpark -130dBc/Hz so this measurement was limited by the very poor phase noise performance of the Rigol and not the Miteq.
What kind of isolation are you getting with those plants ? 😉
Interesting review but I don't agree with some of your comments in the phase noise section. I've never used one of the 600MHz Miteq sources but Miteq would deserve an award for incompetence if they only achieved -107dBc/Hz at 100kHz offset for a 600MHz oscillator. That phase noise is very high! I suspect you are just measuring the phase noise of the Rigol at 100kHz offset.
I would expect that if you weasured the Miteq on an Agilent E5052A it would show better than -130dBc/Hz at 100kHz offset.
God.. that -148dBm noise floor... I was amazed how small signals you can measure with a instrument that costs only ~5500$
I mean that's something that was previously only for instruments around 30.000$and more :P
awesome awesome awesome man
Can someone comment on the phase noise measurement? How do you know the -107dBm/Hz at 100kHz offset was the phase noise of the Miteq oscillator and not affected by the Rigol DSA's phase noise? Shahriar commented that "You can't measure the phase noise of anything that has a better phase noise of this instrument."
1
+Cameron Boone I measured the phase noise of the Miteq module separately. The measured phase noise on the Rigol is very close to the Miteq phase noise. In this case, there is a small contribution from the Rigol on the overall phase noise.
+The Signal Path Blog Thanks for responding! When you say you measured the Miteq module separately do you mean the measurement shown in the video no the rigol, or did you measure it separately with another SA that has better phase noise performance? Does the phase noise of a DSA typically roll off at 20dB/decade, meaning would the Rigol's phase noise be about -108dBc/Hz at 100kHz and then about -128dBc/Hz at 1MHz away?
+Cameron Boone I measured the Miteq with an Agilent PXA which has far superior phase noise. The exact details of the phase noise I do not remember anymore as it was a while back. But I suggest you watch the latest review of the Rigol 7.5GHz spectrum analyzer I did recently, that one I measure with a much better source and you can clearly see the phase noise profile of the SA.
Superb! Thank you!
Where you get so much equipament?
Thanks for the video. I have a question and I haven't watched the entire video yet so I apologize if this was mentioned in it. As shown in your video, with a CW, going from a larger to smaller RBW lowers the noise floor but the power of the CW remains constant and the C/N increases. When I look at a digital PSK modulated signal and do the same thing, the noise floor decreases as expected however the modulated carrier power decreases by the same amount and the C/N remains constant. Why is this?
CW is of ideal BW of 0 and should be concentrated within the filter BW regardless of a reduction of BW. PSK modulated signals on the other hand have its power spread across a BW and hence a reduction in RBW would reduce the energy measured for each point in the sweep.
Why would one use a SA in the kHz range? Any Oscilloscope can do that today.
The dynamic range of a SA is much higher than that of an oscilloscope.
TheSignalPathBlog Even though they have just 8 bit their effective dynamic range is better than that due to oversampling\averaging. For small signals you can make yourself a 50MHz LNA for $30.
I'll start doing that..
Very informative and helpful video. Thanks..
Question.. I have an HP8566B SA but it has no tracking gen. If I wanted to look at the frequency response of a fixed frequency mechanical or lattice filter, Can't I simply use 2 stable signal generators instead? If so, what is the method for this test. I have a number of HP 8640B sig gens that I can use.
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks!!!!!!
nove
wa4aos You can use a noise source and measure the deviation the filter causes.
Nice, thank you!
Better, All that information is largely relevant. But i am just a programmer and do this stuff as a hobby. So as much as this is a mind fuck for me. I love it !
I Bsyarlzt videos are awesome
I'd have to vote for better, due to Shahriar's tempo. I find Dave's tempo to be far too fast to follow, and I do believe that you could say he's a little jumpy around key points. It's just my opinion, and I like Dave's videos, but it's a shame that his hectic presentations can cause the learning potential to fall. Keep up the great work Shahriar!
Man you have some nice toys
👍👍
Hi Shahriar, this is great! I did buy the DSA 815 TG and noticed that the output signal is not great. Here is a link to an EEVBlog forum post I did. I am not an engineer, so I hope I am not making a fundamental error in my observations...
www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/rigol-dsa-815-tracking-generator-distortion/
I think you mean "black" magic as most RF folks will tell you. There are quite a few of the best and brightest will tell you that not everything about RF is fully understood.
Nice review. But, and sorry to be a connector snob, but please don't rotate the body of cal-kit components around like that (e.g. 1:21:15). I know you're not doing metrology-grade measurement here but that's really, really bad practice - the only thing that should rotated is the nut, the pin should never be rotated in the collet. I'm sure you know all this, but it made me cringe so much I had to say something!
I live in Brazil and here that type of equipmente is very expensive.
The most expensive 3GHz radio receiver i have seen LOL 57:30
Your rearrangements are a little weird :P
A chicken on some odd pedestal ... 2 agilents sitting in the corner, a huge base microscope with a 87v ... and certainly the DSA1030 sitting on top of some nondescript (because i don't know :P)
And a glass of wine to top it off!
All goes well with your hair shahriar :P
Don't forget the DM3068 teardown!
Not to forget that lonely looking Weller (WESD51?) sitting below the chicken
It was like nothing I had a long slab
hehe the horrors of live demos: faulty equipment :P
Ok, now we know that you can not measure the phase noise of very good oscillators with this inexpensive device.
You can't measure the phase noise of anything that has a better phase noise of this instrument.
1 hour 32 minutes? That's worse (or better) than most of Dave's videos!
All lies. Unbelievable deception. Karma baby!