Hi folks, The company mentioned, SARA, builds what they call a distributed RF analyzer named CASSPER. They have been working on it for a while now, demoed it at a couple of shows, and to the best of my knowledge the system started to ship recently. In the data sheets I analyzed, mention was made of background noise cancellation techniques by using two time and frequency synchronized receivers, one configured as the "normal" receiver and one as a reference receiver. The time and frequency sync between the two receivers allows for coherent simultaneous measurements of the reference signal and the measuring signal, hence allowing the system to dynamically reduce the noise level in the measurement. So far the data sheets... By the way, this noise cancellation technique will not work on ordinary receivers and spectrum analyzers because the time/frequency synchronization, which cannot be achieved with "ordinary" equipment, is essential.
In theory this works great, but as with all noise/spurious signal cancellation techniques (common in the RCS and antenna measurement world) using a variety of mathematical principles, there will be practical limitations. Also, one of the drawbacks is that you are required to purchase another receiver for this technique to work. And of course this type of receiver with noise cancellation technique is not the kind of device the standards have made provisions for, so the question is if the data will ever be acceptable for compliance measurements per the standards. CASSPER is a very interesting device, very useful for a wide variety of RF applications. I would like to get my hands on one soon to tinker with it and find out exactly what its potential is. The company mentions as applications pre-compliance regulatory testing and EUT debugging, but as indicated it is not usable for compliance testing (yet?). Reference: http://www.sara.com/cassper Regards, -Robert Robert Bonsen Principal Consultant Orion Scientific email: [email protected] URL: http://www.orionscientific.com phone: (512) 347 7393; FAX: (512) 328 9240 --------- This message is coming from the emc-pstc discussion list. To cancel your subscription, send mail to [email protected] with the single line: "unsubscribe emc-pstc" (without the quotes). For help, send mail to [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], or [email protected] (the list administrators).
