Home Shop Wireless Design and Test Spectrum and Signal Analyzers What is a PXI Vector Signal Analyzer?

What Is a PXI Vector Signal Analyzer?

PXI Vector Signal Analyzer (VSA) performs spectrum measurements, demodulation, and signal analysis and can measure the magnitude and phase of an input signal at a certain frequency within a specified bandwidth.

Perform Excellent RF Measurement

A combination of low phase noise and noise floor, excellent dynamic range, and high second- and third-order intercepts makes an NI VSA well suited for a broad range of applications including adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) measurements and spurs and harmonics measurements.

Measure Wide Instantaneous Bandwidth

With up to 765 MHz of instantaneous RF bandwidth, an NI VSA offers the ability to measure extremely wide bandwidths in a single acquisition. This is useful for many applications including testing wireless standards, such as LTE-A Pro, and digital predistoriton and radar pulse measurements.

Achieve Multi-Instrument Synchronization

PXI’s inherent timing and synchronization capabilities can help you achieve subnanosecond synchronization of an NI VSA with other test instruments for applications such as phase-coherent radar measurements, envelope tracking, and direction finding.

Customize Your FPGA Design

You can customize the onboard FPGA to design application-tailored enhancements called FPGA extensions. Using the LabVIEW FPGA Module, you can develop these FPGA extensions to perform measurement acceleration, closed-loop tests, and complex algorithm engineering.

Automate Measurements With NI-RFmx

NI-RFmx provides a highly optimized and intuitive API that offers both ease of use and advanced measurement configuration. With NI-RFmx, an NI VSA can perform tasks such as measurements on digital and analog modulated signals and RF spectral measurements including channel power, adjacent channel power, and harmonics.

Featured Content

Acquired Data Solutions, Inc. built a compact spectrum monitoring system for multiple satellite transponders using VSAs and high-speed recording disks.

Using NI PXI Vector Signal Analyzers, along with the NI LabVIEW FPGA Module, Captronic Systems created a customized, scalable solution to test the entire range of radar function.

The PXIe-5668 microwave signal analyzer meets the challenging requirements of applications such as wireless communications, radio frequency integrated circuit (RFIC) characterization, Radio Detection And Ranging (RADAR) test, and spectrum monitoring/signal intelligence.

Application Note

Noise Figure Measurement With the NI PXI VSA

Learn about the fundamentals of noise and noise figure measurements, including the Y-factor technique and methods to calculate measurement uncertainty with an NI VSA and LabVIEW.

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