- Afmetcal, the US Air Force’s metrology and calibration authority, wanted to acquire microwave measurement receivers (MMRs) for its PMEL (precision measurement equipment laboratories) and AFPSL (Air Force primary standards laboratory).
- The U.S. Metrology Authority chose the R&S FSMR3000AF measurement receiver from Rohde & Schwarz, which will enable it to calibrate signal generators and attenuators with a single instrument. This is the second order Afmetcal has placed with Rohde & Schwarz within a few months.
- The Afmetcal program will use the R&S FSMR3000AF to ensure that Air Force systems and equipment are accurate, consistent, reliable and traceable to national metrology institutes or other Afmetcal approved sources.
Afmetcal is responsible for the calibration of equipment used by the US Air Force worldwide. It writes all equipment calibration procedures for over 60 PMEL laboratories. Afmetcal wanted to calibrate most of the parameters of a signal generator with the R&S FSMR3000AF microwave measurement receiver, including analog modulation for AM, FM and PM.
This solution, which is based on a spectral analysis platform, is intended to replace and improve the microwave measurement receiver that has been in use since 2005. The R&S FSMR3000AF measurement receiver test platform was designed to reduce the implementation complexity of calibrating signal generators and attenuators up to 26.5 GHz and 50 GHz frequency bands.
The FSMR3000AF has a level measurement range of -148 dBm to +30 dBm. In addition, according to Rohde & Schwarz, its linearity of 0.01 dB + 0.005 dB in 10 dB steps, combined with its ability to calibrate absolute power using a power probe, provides highly accurate level measurements.
The instrument incorporates an AM, FM and PM analog modulation analysis function. It is possible to measure AM modulation depths from 0% to 100% and FM frequency deviations up to 16 MHz. For modulation analysis, the instrument offers a signal analysis bandwidth of up to 80 MHz via a 16-bit A/D converter sampling the signals at 200 MS/s. It can also perform modulation measurements on digital signals with the installation of the vector signal analysis option.
For signals with frequencies above 8 GHz, the FSMR3000AF offers a preselection filter option to handle image frequency suppression and unwanted mixing products. It can analyze harmonics, spurious emissions, or phase noise up to 50 GHz. Marker and measurement functions include measurement of noise power, ACLR, harmonic distortion, occupied bandwidth, spectrum emission masks. The resolution bandwidth can be adjusted from 1 Hz to 10 MHz and channel filters are also available.
