Search Application Notes & Cards
Learn how to configure Rohde & Schwarz products to fit your application. Search our database by product, technology, or application to find relevant technical documents.
Search Application Notes & Cards
Learn how to configure Rohde & Schwarz products to fit your application. Search our database by product, technology, or application to find relevant technical documents.
72 Results
This application note describes how to measure the antenna pattern of a mm-Wave device in the R&S®ATS1000 shielded chamber. This includes the required calibration of the measurement setup and a possible near field to far field transformation when measuring larger devices.
28-May-2018 | AN-No. 1MA304
Over the past few years, electronics developers have developed a variety of approaches to avoid interference on high-speed signals on printed circuit boards. However, with increasing complexity and frequency, PCBs set new limits, supporting frequencies of 40 GHz and higher. Driven by the fast growing 5G market, today’s digital systems operate in these high frequency ranges that come with completely new challenges. With slope steepness’s of just a few picoseconds, any discontinuity in the impedance and impairment of the inductance or capacitance on the PCB or back drill defects on the PCB can have a massive impact on the signal quality. The industry recognizes that there is a growing need for functional high-speed testing of PCBs. The MicroCraft® E2V6151 series combined with an R&S®ZNB vector signal analyzer delivers a fully automated solution.
25-Mar-2020
The document gives an overview and user guide about a link budget calculator for the main components of a basic OTA system. The calculator shall guide the user to plan link budgets, especially with respect to SNR requirements for the receive components and the vector signal analyzer. An Excel sheet containing the Link Budget Calculator accompanies the application note.
19-Mar-2019 | AN-No. 1EF104
Software tool for fast and repeatable optimization of signal analyzer RF front-end settings
The signal conditioning in the RF front-end of signal analyzers is crucial to achieve the best performance with respect to image-suppression, noise-floor, dynamic range and other RF-key parameters.Precise signal levelling is especially important for complex measurements like Error-Vector-Magnitude (EVM). To minimize the measurement uncertainty from test system contributions over a wide range of different levels, the RF front-end needs to be adapted continuously according to the signal characteristics, signal power and frequency - ideally using an automatic levelling algorithm.This document describes the approach of a waveform specific, on-site characterization of the signal analyzer: For each waveform and frequency of interest, the instrument is evaluated in a first step. With this additional data, a fast and repeatable auto-levelling can be performed during the actual measurement.
24-Jan-2022 | AN-No. 1EF111
This application note describes how to generate and analyze wideband digitally modulated signals in the mm-wave range.Rohde & Schwarz measuring equipment and some 3rd party off-the-shelf accessories are used for both signal generation and analysis. Measurement results are shown which demonstrate the typical performance for millimeter wave signals in terms of error vector magnitude (EVM) and adjacent channel power (ACLR).Two test setups and their measurement results on a commercial V-band transceiver module are presented.
02-Sep-2014 | AN-No. 1MA217
Test Solutions Based on R&S®CMX500 Platform
The evolution of mobile communication enters 5G New Radio (NR) era with pivotal features. Voice call service is however still considered as an indispensable element for mobile devices and worldwide network operators continue to maintain the voice service for their subscribers. In comparison to other Over-the-Top (OTT) voice services, such as WhatsApp©, Teams© etc., Voice over NR (VoNR) and Voice over LTE (VoLTE) maintain QoS, support well established handover mechanism and emergency call, and do not require to pre-install OTT app on the phone.In order to provide premium voice service and enhance the superb user experience, audio tests on mobile devices are essential before the product launch. Different audio test aspects among which acoustic, functional, performance and field tests need to be considered.This application note describes the performance test with focus on VoNR audio quality measurement via electrical interface of the mobile device. The test solution is based on R&S®CMX500 with its integrated POLQA algorithm.
26-Jul-2023 | AN-No. 1SL401
Connecting simulation and measurements on physical devices
This application note is based on collaborative work between MathWorks® and Rohde & Schwarz. The focus is on linearization of a non-linear device, in our case the RF power amplifier. It is shown how simulation and the integrated functions of the Rohde & Schwarz instruments R&S®SMW200A and R&S®FSW work hand-in-hand with the simulation capabilities from MathWorks in MATLAB / Simulink. The goal is to provide a toolset to enable proper modeling and linearization approaches to optimize and verify the behavior of the power amplifier when used with complex wideband signals as used in 5G NR or latest satellite links.The application note brings code examples and an exemplary block set for MATLAB / Simulink to provide an easy start to replicate and use the described procedure.
05-Aug-2021 | AN-No. 1SL371
Generation of wideband digital modulated signals in V-band and above is a challenging task and typically requires a set of multiple instruments. This application note aims at simplifying the task and looks into the analysis part as well. Latest signal and spectrum analyzers like the R&S®FSW67 and R&S®FSW85 are first to allow use in V-band up to 67 GHz and E-band up to 85 GHz respectively without external frequency conversion. Up to 8.3 GHz of modulation bandwidth can be covered using the R&S®FSW-B8001 option. Millimeter wave use of analyzers ranging from 26 GHz up is shown. Application note 1MA217 describes V-band signal generation and analysis up to 500 MHz modulation bandwidth. This application note expands modulation bandwidth up to 2 GHz and covers both V- and E-band examples.
18-Jun-2015 | AN-No. 1MA257
Designing and implementing an active phased array antenna requires precise characterization of individual components and the integrated performance of the array. To ensure an accurate test of the intended adaptive nature of the active phased array antenna, the embedded algorithms need to be tested as well.This application note aims to explain test procedures and give recommendations towards characterization of the relevant parameters for active phased array antennas and their passive subsystem, as often used in applications for Mobile Communication and RADAR. This application note describes transmit signal quality testing, multi-element amplitude and phase measurement techniques both in receive and transmit cases and introduces a new automated test methodology antenna radiation pattern measurement over frequency. This paper also describes the test system used for transmit and receive module (TRM) characterization in active array antennas.
04-Jul-2016 | AN-No. 1MA248
Today’s cars are highly integrated and interconnected. Up to 150 embedded electronic control units (ECUs) in a car secure a convenient and safe driving experience. Examples of ECUs include transmission control modules, ECUs for air conditioning systems, and even self-updating 5G-ready telematics control units.
06-Jul-2020
Mobile network operators worldwide face cost pressures and escalating network complexity. The advent of 5G-NR has ushered in new use cases and flexibility, but it also comes with more stringent performance and availability requirements.Machine Learning can serve as a catalyst for the market to unearth deep insights that would otherwise remain concealed. It can also significantly streamline everyday tasks by fostering a smarter system that guides users through their routine work processes, rather than obliging them to repeat each (manual) step. Rohde & Schwarz Mobile Network Testing has focused its efforts on delivering Machine Learning use cases that distill relevant insights from drive testing data, thereby offering substantial benefits to users.This educational note explains the motivation and reasoning why this kind of approach is needed, what are the benefits of the machine learning offering and it takes a deeper look into how it can be used in various levels of statistical and technical analysis. Finally, this document provides real measurement results and analysis findings based on the Rohde & Schwarz post processing SW suite SmartAnalytics and its machine learning based features Call Stability Score and Network Utilization Rating.
28-Feb-2024 | AN-No. 8NT10
What used to be the car radio has evolved from adding a cassette player to state of the art entertainment on the move. All this while keeping driver & passengers connected. The design challenge is to bring all the communication and broadcast standards into a small form factor that fits in the dashboard of the car. The RF modules need to support multiple standards in a single assembly and multiple modules are placed next to each other. The frequencies defined by the RF standards are in very close proximity and hence need to co-exist with each other. Moreover, the antennas inside the car are subjected to cross-coupling effects with mobile devices of passengers. To ensure the RF performance of the infotainment system, all of these scenarios need to be thoroughly tested.This application note highlights some of the RF measurement challenges and introduces Rohde & Schwarz equipment required for relevant RF characterization of car infotainment devices.
08-May-2017 | AN-No. 1MA275