Realising waveforms

today introduced the industry's only arbitrary waveform generator (AWG) that simultaneously delivers 1.25 GS/s and 10 bits of vertical resolution for emerging communication systems, such as ultrawideband (UWB), multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radios, and advanced DSL.

Specifically for UWB, the Agilent N6031A arbitrary waveform generator enables digital-signal-processing (DSP) and systems engineers who design advanced wideband systems to rapidly create realistic Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) UWB signals compliant with the Multiband OFDM Alliance (MBOA) proposal.

"The Agilent N6031A provides less than three percent EVM error, enabling engineers to easily realise low-distortion, high-resolution UWB waveforms at a lower cost than the industry-leading N6030A," said Pat Byrne, president of Agilent's Electronic Products and Solutions Group. "With this new AWG, Agilent now offers solutions for every stage in the UWB design process, from signal creation to baseband realisation and up-conversion, to capture and signal analysis."

The newly enhanced advanced sequencer capability for both the Agilent N6030A and N6031A is said to extend the effective size of the on-board memory of both AWGs by compressing the total memory required for repetitive waveforms. This means only the unique portions of the waveform need to be saved in memory. Once saved, loops and repeats define how waveforms or groups of waveforms are played out of the AWG.

This capability gives engineers the ability to generate new signals from existing waveforms by playing only sub-segments from the waveform memory, which enables long, complex signal sequences to be easily created from the finite on-board memory. In addition, it provides greater flexibility to create event-based simulations and to synchronise the AWG with other test equipment.

Agilent also introduced a built-in baseband corrections feature for the N6030A and N6031A that provides automatic correction of linear distortions with an assurance of linearity of +/- 150 ps RMS across 1 GHz of I/Q bandwidth. With the new baseband corrections capability, engineers can automatically correct these linear distortions (pre-distortion) to correct for this error, eliminating the need to build a specific FIR filter or other pre-distortion algorithm.

Both the Agilent N6030A and N6031A provide up to 1 GHz of I/Q bandwidth and up to 75 dBc of spurious-free dynamic range for rapidly creating realistic wideband signals.

With four-slot 3U CompactPCI formats, both AWGs can be used as standalone AWGs and as scalable system components for complex MIMO designs. A single module can drive eight total modules to create synchronous operation on a sample-by-sample basis. Multiple programmatic interfaces are included to speed custom UWB waveform development and system integration, including MATLAB(r), LabView, IVI-C, Agilent ADS, and Microsoft.NET framework.

The Agilent N6031A arbitrary waveform generator will be available from July 1, 2005.