just out of curiosity i would like to study the E4401 and see if it can be hacked to go to 3GHz, Agilent was good about putting features in their units and then limit them by Firmware corrections, i would not be surprised if the E4401 actually has all the RF to go to 3GHz but is just limited by firmware.
I wouldnt downgrade from a E44 to a 8590 the E44 as far as i know are at least synthesized, the problem with the downconverter approach is that you only have 0-1.5GHz to work with, in order to get a decent image rejection you would not be able to utilize the full band so you end up only beein able to look at a fairly narrow band.
70000 Systems to 2.9GHz are fairly cheap, or you can go for a 8560 or 8561
John Miles <jmiles@...> wrote:
What's your budget like? What features do you actually need?
If you are OK with your current model except for its upper tuning limit,
have you thought about building a downconverter for it? There may even be
frequency-offset and amplitude-offset features in the E4401B's firmware that
will adjust the display to account for an external oscillator and mixer.
If you want calibrated >1.5 GHz coverage in one box but don't want to spend
much money, you'll have to ask yourself what firmware features you're
willing to give up. Switching to an 8590-series analyzer would get you a
higher frequency limit and similar RF performance, but it's an older product
line with fewer bells and whistles. An 8560A or 8560E would be the next
step up in price, and actually a much-better piece of gear from an RF
standpoint, but again it would be missing some newer firmware features.
-- john, KE5FX
Hi.
A few years ago I had the opportunity to purchase a used E4401B
Spectrum analyzer which has worked well for me. I am now interested in
looking as signals between 1.5 and 2 GHz which this analyzer will not
handle. Any suggestions.
Thanks.
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