Agilent / HP 89640A

The Agilent 89640A consists of two separate applications for Microsoft Windows NT or Windows 2000. The 89640A vector signal analyzer (VSA) performs vector analysis of complex signals in the time, frequency and modulation domains.

The 89640A VSA emulates a traditional spectrum analyzer, providing fast, high-resolution signal magnitude measurements while sweeping across a user-defined frequency span.

The 89640A analyzer’s built-in Visual Basic Script interpreter allows many types of measurement and analysis tasks to be easily automated. Scripts may be developed using any text editor, or may be recorded automatically from a sequence of menu selections.

Completed scripts may be named and integrated onto the analyzer’s toolbar, allowing them to be launched with a single button press.

To operate the 89640A or view its displays from a remote location, the use of commercially-available remote PC software such as Microsoft NetMeeting or Symantec PCAnywhere is recommended.

For storage and recall of measured or captured waveforms, spectra and other measurement results, the supported file formats are ASCII (.txt, .csv), Binary (.sdf, .cap, .dat) and MAT-file (.mat).

Because the 89640A functionality is implemented within its software, direct programmatic access to the measurement front-end hardware is never necessary, and is not supported.

Software development environments that are capable of interacting with COM objects include Agilent VEE, Microsoft Visual Basic, Microsoft Visual C++, MATLAB®, National Instruments LabView and others.

In addition, many end-user applications are able to interact directly with COM objects, using built-in macro languages such as Visual Basic for Applications (VBA).

In source mode the 89640A VSA can control a signal generator via GPIB or LAN. Control is provided via the VSA GUI. Frequency and level control of CW signals is provided. Arbitrary signals may be downloaded from the time capture memory to the signal generator for replay.