RF Modular Instruments offer flexible wireless measurements.
Press Release Summary:
Complemented by NI PXIe-1075 18-slot high-bandwidth chassis, NI PXIe-5663 can perform signal analysis from 10 MHz to 6.6 GHz with up to 50 MHz of instantaneous bandwidth, while NI PXIe-5673 delivers signal generation from 85 MHz to 6.6 GHz and up to 100 MHz of instantaneous bandwidth. Offering operating range of 0-50°C, PXI Express chassis has PCI Express lanes routed to every slot providing up to 1 Gb/s per-slot bandwidth and up to 4 Gb/s total system bandwidth.
Original Press Release:
National Instruments Introduces 6.6 GHz PXI Express RF Vector Signal Analyzer and Vector Signal Generator
New RF Modular Instruments and PXI Express Chassis Offer Fast, Flexible Wireless Measurements
AUSTIN, Texas, Aug. 5, 2008 /- NIWeek -- National Instruments (NASDAQ:NATI) today announced a new RF vector signal analyzer, RF vector signal generator and PXI Express 18-slot chassis that offer flexible RF measurements up to 10 times faster than traditional RF instrumentation. The new software-defined modular instruments -- the NI PXIe-5663 6.6 GHz RF vector signal analyzer and the NI PXIe-5673 6.6 GHz RF vector signal generator -- are complemented by the NI PXIe-1075 18-slot high-bandwidth chassis. The NI PXIe-5663 can perform signal analysis from 10 MHz to 6.6 GHz with up to 50 MHz of instantaneous bandwidth. The NI PXIe-5673 delivers signal generation from 85 MHz to 6.6 GHz and up to 100 MHz of instantaneous bandwidth. The NI PXIe-1075 is the industry's first PXI Express chassis with PCI Express lanes routed to every slot providing up to 1 GB/s per-slot bandwidth and up to 4 GB/s total system bandwidth.
The new RF modular instruments, which take full advantage of high-performance multicore processors, are ideal for high-speed RF and wireless automated test environments. With LabVIEW 8.6 to implement parallel measurement algorithms on multicore CPUs, engineers can use the new RF vector signal analyzer and RF vector signal generator to perform many common RF measurements significantly faster than traditional instruments. For example, the RF modular instruments can perform many individual WCDMA measurements more than 20 times faster than traditional instruments. With the ability to implement measurements such as adjacent-channel leakage ratio (ACLR) in only 8 ms, engineers can perform full WCDMA device characterizations up to five times faster.
Engineers also can use these instruments to perform general-purpose measurements faster. For example, a typical 50 MHz spectrum sweep with a 30 kHz resolution bandwidth takes just under 4 ms with an NI PXIe-8106 controller, while leading traditional instruments can take 100 ms or more for the same measurement. As new multicore processors are released, PXI-based RF measurement times will continue to decrease without requiring changes to the RF instrumentation or NI LabVIEW programming, thus ensuring maximum measurement performance, increased system longevity and decreased capital investment.
In addition to performance, the new RF modular instruments offer industry-leading measurement flexibility through a completely software-defined architecture. Engineers can develop and test wireless protocols by simply reconfiguring the software using standard-specific LabVIEW toolkits or writing their own custom modulation algorithms. NI and National Instruments Alliance Partners provide toolkits based on LabVIEW for many current and emerging communications technologies, including WiMAX, GPS, WCDMA, GSM, EDGE, broadcast video, 802.11, Bluetooth, OFDM and MIMO. In addition, engineers can integrate PXI RF instrumentation with more than 1,500 PXI modules including high-speed digitizers, signal generators and precision DC instruments to meet their complete test needs.
The new 6.6 GHz modular instruments achieve these new levels of performance using the latest commercial technologies including 16-bit digital-to-analog converters and analog-to-digital converters used to generate and digitize signals for superior dynamic performance. The NI PXIe-5673 RF vector signal generator uses direct RF upconversion to provide up to 100 MHz of RF bandwidth. Using an additional "impairments mode," engineers can take advantage of an onboard field-programmable gate array (FPGA) to manually adjust the gain imbalance, IQ offsets and quadrature skew quickly. With baseband impairments optimized for a particular frequency, engineers can achieve better than -85 dBc of carrier and image suppression. The NI PXIe-5663 RF vector signal analyzer offers passband flatness and low phase noise so it can accurately measure modulated signals. For example, typical EVM performance for WCDMA is 0.8 percent at 2 GHz for more than 2,600 symbols. Additionally, typical EVM performance for WiMAX is -52 dB at 3.8 GHz.
"Now engineers can experience the performance benefits of true software-defined RF instrumentation based on LabVIEW and the PXI platform," said Joseph E. Kovacs, senior RF and communications manager for National Instruments. "With the bandwidth of PXI Express and parallel processing capabilities of multicore processors, NI software-defined RF instrumentation will continue to get faster as technology evolves. Our customers will benefit from speed improvements of 10 times compared to traditional instruments today as well as improvements that will occur as processors with more cores come to market."
The NI PXIe-1075 18-slot chassis provides eight hybrid slots that engineers can use for either PXI Express or PXI hybrid-slot-compatible modules to maximize reuse of existing PXI modules. Designed for high-performance systems, the NI PXIe-1075 chassis offers an operating temperature range of 0 to 50 degrees Celsius and provides integrated system monitoring features including power management, fan health and temperature monitoring for the entire chassis.
To learn more about the new 6.6 GHz RF modular instruments and high-performance PXI Express 18-slot chassis, visit http://www.ni.com/rf/platform.
About PXI and Modular Instruments
PCI eXtensions for Instrumentation (PXI) is an open specification governed by the PXI Systems Alliance (http://www.pxisa.org/) that defines a rugged, CompactPCI-based platform optimized for test, measurement and control. Created in 1997, the PXI specification is supported by more than 70 vendors offering more than 1,500 PXI products. With PXI modular instruments, engineers specify the essential functionality they require -- choosing from a wide variety of measurement, signal generation, RF, power and switch modules. Then, they configure the instruments in software for their specific measurement tasks. PXI and modular instruments provide high-speed test execution by harnessing the power of industry-standard PC and advanced timing and synchronization technologies. The product family includes:
-- Digitizers/oscilloscopes (up to 24 bits, up to 2 GS/s, up to eight channels)
-- Signal generators (up to 16 bits, 200 MS/s)
-- Digital waveform generator/analyzers (up to 400 Mb/s)
-- RF signal generators and analyzers (up to 6.6 GHz)
-- Digital multimeters (up to 71/2 digits, LCR)
-- Source measure unit (four-quadrant source, 1 nA resolution)
-- Programmable power supplies (up to 20 W, 16 bits)
-- Dynamic signal analyzers (up to 24 bits, 500 kS/s)
-- Switching (multiplexers, matrices, general-purpose and RF)
About National Instruments
National Instruments (http://www.ni.com/) is transforming the way engineers and scientists design, prototype and deploy systems for measurement, automation and embedded applications. NI empowers customers with off-the-shelf software such as NI LabVIEW and modular cost-effective hardware, and sells to a broad base of more than 25,000 different companies worldwide, with no one customer representing more than 3 percent of revenue and no one industry representing more than 10 percent of revenue. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, NI has more than 4,800 employees and direct operations in nearly 40 countries. For the past nine years, FORTUNE magazine has named NI one of the 100 best companies to work for in America. Readers can obtain investment information from the company's investor relations department by calling (512) 683-5090, e-mailing nati@ni.com or visiting http://www.ni.com/nati.
Pricing and Contact Information
NI PXIe-5663 vector signal analyzer priced* from $22,999; euro 20,299; 3,261,000 yen
NI PXIe-5673 vector signal generator priced* from $23,999; euro 21,199; 3,402,000 yen
NI PXIe-1075 chassis priced* from $5,999; euro 5,299; 725,000 yen
*All prices are subject to change without notice.
LabVIEW, National Instruments, National Instruments Alliance Partner, NI, ni.com and NIWeek are trademarks of National Instruments. Other product and company names listed are trademarks or trade names of their respective companies.
A National Instruments Alliance Partner is a business entity independent from National Instruments and has no agency, partnership, or joint-venture relationship with NI.
Ernest Martinez, 1-800-258-7022, both of National Instruments
Web site: http://www.ni.com/
http://www.pxisa.org/
