Speaking of VNA, I just received an Agilent E4406A this afternoon and have been checking it out. It is around 8 years old and was last calibrated in 2009.
I'm having fun with the IQ polar display, trying to get it to properly display when looking at AM, FM and phase modulated signals from my 8642B, as well as playing with the spectrum analyzer functions. One insight is that both units have to be locked to the same 10 MHz frequency standard for the IQ polar screen to produce a reasonable display.
Next I am going to see if I can get digital modulation signals produced by my 8782B vector signal generator to properly display on the E4406A.
In case anyone is interested in a *relatively* low cost VNA, there are several more E4406A available on eBay from my seller, see 261144769307. I believe these were originally utilized by Nokia at a Mexican cellphone manufacturing plant right across the border from Hidalgo, Texas.
This is not suitable as a general purpose spectrum analyzer since the maximum span is 10 MHz and it is optimized for cellphone and cell base station testing. However the price was reasonable (considering the MSRP 8 years ago was around $50K with options) and the upper frequency is 4 GHz which is more than double the top limit of my 8591E, so I decided to go for it.
Patrick Wong AK6C
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--- In hp_agilent_equipment@..., bownes wrote:
I'd agree that there is a huge quantum in thinking when going from an o'scope to a spectrum analyzer. There is a similar one from SA to vector network analyzer.
The easy cheap SA cutoff is in the 1-2 ghz region, usually 1.5 to 1.8 or so.
