Aeroflex Incorporated has announced a new family of three low-cost broadband signal analyzers that locate, record, and analyze complex communications signals for commercial, military, and aerospace applications. These are based on Aeroflex’s broadband signal analyzer (BSA) family, the Scout, Hunter, and Explorer signal analyzers.

"Customers can reduce the cost of their signal analysis capability by at least 55 percent. Unlike other analyzers that only tell you what happened, Aeroflex analyzers tell you why it happened,” said Sue Guzman, Vice President and Aeroflex Cupertino General Manager, Aeroflex Test Solutions.

The new analyzer product family consists of a portable signal analyzer, the Aeroflex Scout CS1104, and two rack-mountable signal analyzers, the Aeroflex Hunter CS1207 and the Aeroflex Explorer CS1247. Common applications for the products are radar; communications; broadband RF test; satellites; electronic warfare (EW)/electronic countermeasures (ECM); spectrum monitoring; propagation measurement; electromagnetic environments (EME) analysis; wireless; and chip test. All products have an intuitive user interface based on the Aeroflex BSA software.

The Scout CS1104 is a portable signal analyzer designed for users who want to go out in the field and to find signals of interest. Whether the task is collecting RF signals on the move, or analyzing them in the lab, the Aeroflex Scout allows ultimate flexibility. Scout’s RF coverage extends from 20 MHz to 3 GHz with 40 MHz instantaneous bandwidth, an 8 GB signal capture RAM, and a 1 TB removable data storage disk. Scout is targeted to provide data analysis and recording for portable applications.

The Hunter CS1207 and Explorer CS1247 are rack-mountable signal analyzers. Hunter is  for users who wish to search for a specific signal, hone in on a narrower frequency range around that signal of interest and analyze it. Hunter’s RF coverage extends from 10 MHz to 6 GHz with 70 MHz instantaneous bandwidth, a 32 GB signal capture RAM, and an 8 TB removable data storage disk. It is designed for applications that need greater RF bandwidth than Scout and adequate memory for longer signal recordings.

The Explorer CS1247 combines Hunter’s existing narrowband capability with additional wideband capabilit and is for users who need to explore, record, and analyze across a wide frequency range. Explorer’s RF coverage extends from 10 MHz to 6 GHz with operator-selectable 70 MHz or 400 MHz instantaneous bandwidths, a 32 GB signal capture RAM, and an 8 TB removable data storage disk. Like Hunter, Explorer can zero in on a narrow spectrum range to look at a specific signal, record it, and analyze it. Explorer excels in all of the Hunter applications as well as adding capability for wideband signals such as radar, communications, and EW.

Software and Hardware Options

The family of Aeroflex BSAs has a longer contiguous record time and solves a wider array of difficult problems. Aeroflex BSA software is updated to solve emerging problems and new signal standards, as well as modifications to current signals. Scout, Hunter, and Explorer all include three BSA software modules—BSA Basic, BSA Modulation Domain, and BSA Scanning Spectrum Analyzer. Many other BSA software module options are also available for Scout, Hunter, and Explorer.

Software and hardware modules included with Scout, Hunter, and Explorer:

BSA Basic software module—includes spectrum, spectrogram, and time software displays
BSA Modulation Domain software module—calculates and displays AM, FM, and PM waveforms and their statistics
BSA Scanning Spectrum Analyzer software module—emulates a traditional spectrum analyzer to view any range of spectrum instantaneously
GPS hardware module option—provides positioning and time stamp for the collected data. This option is standard on Scout and can be ordered as an option for Hunter and Explorer.