8542C Giga-tronics Universal Power Meter

The Giga-tronics 8540C Series Universal Power Meters combine accuracy, speed, range and measurement capabilities unavailable from any other power meter. Built-in features such as power sweep calibration and frequency calibration provide an unequalled degree of measurement accuracy. Only the 8540C Series power meters have the speed and range to meet the throughput demands of high volume manufacturing. And the meters can measure the CW, peak and true average power of the complex modulated signals used in EW, radar, and communications systems.

The 8540C can automatically measure the average power of pulse modulated signals or pulse signals that are amplitude modulated during the pulse ‘on’ period — such as TDMA (time division multiple access) signals. And the exclusive burst start exclude and burst end exclude capabilities of the 8540C allow you to exclude the beginning or end of a burst when measuring the average burst power. Masking the beginning or end of a burst signal, in order to exclude overshoot or other distortions, can be desirable or even required for certain types of measurements. The exclusive Time Gating feature of the 8540C lets you program a measurement start time and duration to measure the average power during a specific time slot of a burst signal. This is critical for accurately measuring the average power of GSM, NADC and measureother formats that must control the power trajectory during a specified portion of the burst.

PHS (as well as DECT and CT-2) systems use a variation of the TDMA format. Instead of using different frequency channels for the forward and reverse link, these systems use a Time Domain Duplex (TDD) method at the same frequency. The Time Gating feature of the 8540C can be used in all of the average power measurement modes to accurately measure the average power of the multiplexed time slots. The 8540C has the speed, accuracy and range to accurately measure the power level of CDMA (code division multiple access) signals for open-loop and closed-loop testing. The wide dynamic range of the 8540C is ideal for openloop tests, which can require power verification over an 80 dB range. Because the 8540C can achieve fast measurement speeds over the GPIB bus, you can quickly measure power in1dB steps over the 48 dB range required for closed-loop tests.