MODEL 8559A

OPERATION

SECTION Ill

OPERATION

3-1. INTRODUCTION

3-2. This section provides operating information for the HP 8559A Spectrum Analyzer plug-in. It also provides a brief description of display mainframe controls. For a detailed description of the display mainframe, refer to its manual.

3-3. The HP 8559A Spectrum Analyzer plug-in can be used with either the 180-series display mainframes or the HP 853A Spectrum Analyzer Display main- frame.

3-4. DESCRIPTION3-5. HP 8559A Spectrum Analyzer

3-6. The HP 8559A employs harmonic mixing to cover a measurement range of 10 MHz to 21 GHz in six frequency bands. It can display frequency spans as narrow as 100 kHz, and as wide as 9 GHz (the latter in full span mode). A five-digit LED readout indicates the spectrum analyzer center frequency with a resolution of 1 MHz. The HP 8559A can be used to measure signals over an amplitude range of

-111dBm to + 30 dBm.3-7. HP 853A Spectrum Analyzer Display

3-8. The HP 853A Spectrum Analyzer Display is a large-screen, digital storage display mainframe for use exclusively with the H P 8559A, 8558B, and 8557A Spectrum Analyzer plug-ins. Digital memory provides buffer storage for two independent traces, both of which can be displayed or blanked as desired. Digital processing also provides push-button features such as maximum signal hold, digital aver- aging, and trace normalization. A conventional analog display mode can also be selected.

3-10. The HP 853A has limited HP-IB capabilities. CRT trace and graticule data is dumped directly to a listen-only HP-IB plotter by pressing two front-panel push buttons. Control settings on the spectrum analyzer plug-in cannot be monitored via the HP-IB;

however, all digital display functions are programmable via a controller, and two lines of annotation can be displayed on the CRT for labelling purposes or operator prompting. In addition, controller commands allow transfer of trace data for analysis or storage.

3-11. CONTROLS, INDICATORS, AND CON-NECTORS3-12. Control Grouping

3-13. The Spectrum Analyzer plug-in and Display mainframe front-panel controls fall into three general groups: those that deal with the display, those that deal with frequency, and those that deal with amplitude. These controls are shown in Figure 3-1 and accompanied by detailed explanations of their use.

3-14. Display. The display group consists of:

SWEEP TIME/DIV

VIDEO FILTER

SWEEP TRIGGER

BASELINE CLIPPER
VERT POSNHORIZONTAL POSI-

 

TION
VERT GAININTENSITY
MANUAL SWEEPFOCUS
HORIZ GAIN (rearTRACE ALIGN
panel of H P 8559A)

 

3-15. The display group enables the operator to calibrate the display and to select a variety of scan and display conditions. However, when the SWEEP TIME/DIV Control is placed in the AUTO position, sweep time is controlled by the RESOLUTION BW, FREQ SPAN/DIV, and VIDEO FILTER controls.

3-16. Frequency. The frequency group consists of:

TUNING

FREQUENCY BAND GHz

ALT IF

SIG IDENT

RESOLUTION BW

FREQ SPAN/DIV