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.
62 Results
Useful tips and tricks for your first measurement experience
Resistors, capacitors and inductors are the most basic components in electric circuits. It must be ensured that they work properly and accurately. Therefore, they need to be tested thoroughly during circuit design. This is usually done using LCR meters, which have become indispensable in the lab and in production. This application note looks at how to perform basic capacitor and inductor measurements accurately and reliably.
22-Feb-2024 | AN-No. 1GP142
The application program of this application note provides a tool for cycling battery samples, using two-quadrant DC power supplies from Rohde & Schwarz. The batteries can be repeatedly charged and discharged while collecting information about open-circuit voltage, loaded voltage and internal resistance, depending on the charged and discharged capacity. The tool provides a variety of charts for displaying the collected data. It can be used for characterizing battery samples, as well as for creating battery models which can be used in the battery simulations of R&S®NGU201 and R&S®NGM200.This tool is meant for the use by knowledgeable experts. The application note does not provide instructions on how to properly charge and discharge batteries.
17-Dec-2021 | AN-No. 1GP130
The LCR meters R&S®LCX100 and R&S®LCX200 precisely measure the complex impedance and the resulting components values over a wide frequency range. Dynamic impedance measurements allow to perform these measurements while sweeping the test signal frequency or other parameters like test signal level and DC bias. This application note provides a PC-based software tool for comfortably setting the sweeps and displaying the results in numerous charts.
14-Mar-2022 | AN-No. 1GP132
This application program supports the logging and fast logging functionality of the power supplies R&S® NGM200, NGU201 and NGU401. Standard logging is also supported with power supply R&S® NGL200 and NGP800. Power supplies R&S® NGA100 and NGE100 are supported in the data collection mode. Charting functionality is available for logged voltage, current and power values.
14-Nov-2019 | AN-No. 1GP122
All channels of DC power supplies R&S®NGL200 and R&S®NGM200 are isolated against the grounding equipment conductor and against the digital ground of the instrument. Therefore, channels can be connected in parallel for increasing the current capability, or in series for achieving higher voltages or dual-voltage supplies. In the case of parallel and serial connections it is usually desired to switch all channels simultaneously on and off for protecting the supplied circuitry and for avoiding overcurrent on other power supply channels.This application note describes how to connect and configure DC power supplies R&S®NGL200 and R&S®NGM200 for synchronized on and off switching of all channels across multiple power supplies.
15-Jun-2020 | AN-No. 1GP126
This application note proposes a digital level shifter for connecting the I2S interfaces R&S®UPP-B2 and R&S®UPV-B41 to devices under test with a logic voltage different from 3.3 V.
27-Mar-2020 | AN-No. 1GA71
This application note applies to DC power supplies R&S®NGL200, R&S®NGM200, R&S®NGP800, R&S®NGU201 and R&S®NGU401, as well as LCR meters R&S®LCX100 and R&S®LCX200. It provides an overview over ethernet-based remote services provided by the referenced R&S® instruments. These services comprise an instrument web page, VNC remote control and FTP file transfer between the instrument and a remote computer. The application note gives instructions on how to set up the instrument and the remote computer in order to be able to utilize these services.
19-May-2022 | AN-No. 1GP135
Source measure units R&S®NGU401 and R&S®NGU201 are capable of precise current measurements from sub-microampere up to ampere. This application note provides a tool which generates a voltage or current sweep using the arbitrary function of the instruments. A fast log captures voltage and current values during the sweep. Subsequently the application program determines the voltage and current value for each sweep step and plots the results in an I-V curve .The tool can be utilized to characterize all kinds of two-pole devices like diodes, LEDs and solar panels.This application note can also be used in connection with DC power supplies R&S®NGM201 and R&S®NGM202.
15-Feb-2021 | AN-No. 1GP129
Applications requiring higher voltages or currents, or a stack of voltage sources with taps in-between, demand the combination of several DC power supply channels in series or in parallel.All channels of DC power supplies R&S®NGL200 and R&S®NGM200 are isolated against the grounding equipment conductor and against the digital ground of the instrument. Therefore, channels can be connected in parallel for increasing the current capability, or in series for achieving higher voltages or dual-voltage supplies.When a large number of power supply channels is used, it is desirable to have a tool for configuring all instruments and channels from one user interface, and for keeping an overview over the states and measurement values from all channels.The application program of this application note provides such a tool. The document contains background information and user manual for the software.
27-Aug-2020 | AN-No. 1GP127
Today’s complex circuits must integrate several components that feed on different power levels. A robust circuit that ensures interoperability of these components needs carefully designed, clean and stable power distribution networks for power timing. At lower voltage levels, tolerance is defined in percentages and can make precise measurements challenging.
22-Apr-2024
Timing components such as low jitter oscillators and clocks are necessary to facilitate increasing data rates in high speed digital designs. As part of the overall system design, the components also have to perform in the system’s non-ideal power integrity environment and limit the power supply induced phase noise and jitter from power rail disturbances. Measuring the power supply noise rejection (PSNR) requires accurate generation and leveling of artificial, sinusoidal disturbances and measurement of resulting phase-noise and jitter impairments.
30-Sep-2020
Verify and optimize your product design under realistic fading conditions in a deterministic lab environment that allows repeatable measurements using standardized and user-defined fading profiles.
27-Oct-2020
Measuring and optimizing the characteristics of individual elements within an antenna array for beamforming performance of Qualcomm 5G mmWave modems SDX50 and SDX55.
25-Feb-2020
Many applications in aerospace and defense as well as in mobile communication require a defined magnitude and phase relation between several signals, for example, to design a smart antenna array and it's distribution network, or to ensure accurate phase alignment between different transmitter or receiver chains of T/R modules. Magnitude can be measured with spectrum analyzers or power meters. For phase measurements, a vector network analyzer is the easiest, fastest and most accurate instrument.This application note shows how to measure the phase accurately between several signals using vector network analyzers of the R&S®ZNA, R&S®ZNB and R&S®ZNBT families.
11-Jul-2019 | AN-No. 1EZ82
Automating measurement setups is advantageous for multiple reasons. It saves time in case of repeated measurements and in hazardous environments, instruments can be operated from a distance. The measurements are repeatable because they are always performed with a defined procedure, leading to higher test confidence.But in remote control applications, users often perceive synchronization and binary transfers as challenging. Therefore, this application note focuses on binary transfer of data to and from the instrument and shows code example to demonstrate the ease of use.
31-Mar-2022 | AN-No. 1SL381
Make more accurate power rail measurements.
09-Jul-2020
RF system noise contributions define receiver capabilities and sensitivity. The noise figure measures how the critical components affect the signal.
28-Jan-2022
Using R&S®RTP high-performance oscilloscopes and R&S®VSE-K6A phased array measurement option
12-Jul-2021
CST® Filter Designer 3D, which is part of the CST Studio Suite® simulation software from Dassault Systèmes, is a complete synthesis tool for filters and diplexers. It provides a range of solutions throughout the design process of coupled resonator filters and even beyond with its VNA based tuning capability. CST Filter Designer 3D assists in tuning filter hardware, significantly reducing the time for optimizing a device to meet the expected specifications. An attractive instrument to obtain fast data reading for realtime filter tuning is the R&S®ZNB vector network analyzer from Rohde & Schwarz.
27-Nov-2019
High-precision two-quadrant power supplies generate current profiles and simulate batteries
10-Dec-2020
Oscilloscopes are basic everyday instruments for engineers and electricians. Maintenance tasks, however, sometimes require very specific measurements that are not available as standard functionality or are difficult to set up manually. With the R&S®RTH-K38 user scripting option, engineers can now design their own measurement function and a simple user interface. This paper describes how to use this unique feature for railway maintenance work.
06-May-2020
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
R&S®Server-Based Testing helps reduce test times for workloads that can be parallelized. 5G New Radio (5G NR) multicarrier signals are an ideal workload because each component carrier can be analyzed independently and in parallel. In an example EVM measurement, scenario test times are reduced significantly even when receiving I/Q data from just a single instrument.
13-Sep-2021
Fault identification in single elements of antenna arrays by scanning in near-field range and applying the near-field to far-field transformation method.
24-Mar-2020
Frequency converters e.g. in satellite transponders need to be characterized not only in terms of amplitude transmission but also in terms of phase transmission or group delay, especially with the transition to digital modulation schemes. They often do not provide access to the internal local oscillators. This application note describes a method using the R&S®ZNA analyzer family to measure group delay of mixers and frequency converters with an embedded local oscillator very accurately. The key aspect of this new technique is that the network analyzer applies a 2-tone signal to the frequency converter. By measuring the phase differences between the two signals at the input and at the output, it calculates group delay and relative phase.
11-Jul-2019 | AN-No. 1EZ81
Load pull is a powerful method for characterizing RF power amplifiers through impedance variation. Load pull enables model extraction and validation as well as performance, ruggedness and efficiency testing.
02-Sep-2020
Impedance measurements with vector network analyzers require maximum precision. The R&S®ZNL is able to characterize a broad range of impedances with the lowest uncertainty among its competitors in the same class.
02-Oct-2019
In this day and age of internet of things, more and more devices are connected to the local network, making it even more difficult for the IT department to monitor them. Rohde & Schwarz instruments are also increasingly accessed via their LAN interface, which provides additional convenience features such as remote desktop, SMB file transfer or a web interface. To make it easier to monitor the use and status of instruments, some devices offer a software option, the Health and Utilization Monitoring Service (HUMS).HUMS can be accessed via SNMP and REST (HTTP) and provides all necessary information about the health status and utilization over time in many details.This application note describes how to access HUMS and what data is provided.
11-Jan-2021 | AN-No. GFM336
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
Since June 2017 almost all radio transmitters and receivers sold or put into operation in the European Union have to be tested for immunity against interferers in adjacent frequency bands. ETSI standard EN 303 345 defines the tests to be performed on broadcast sound receivers, and the requirements to be passed.This application note describes the test procedures and provides script files and interferer signals for the Broadcast Test Center R&S®BTC.
29-May-2020 | AN-No. 1GP117