Investigations into Cost Reductions of X-band Instrumentation

The prohibitive costs of commercial test equipment for making fast and accurate pulsed phase and amplitude measurements at X-Band result in decreased productivity due to shortages of shared equipment across the test laboratory. In addition, most current set-ups rely on the use of pulsed power heads which do not allow for the measurement of phase thereby limiting the flexibility of available measurements. In this paper, we investigate less expensive in-house designed instrumentation based upon commercial satellite down converters and widely available logarithmic detector amplifiers and phase detectors. The techniques are used to measure X-Band pulses with widths of 50 ns to 10's of usec. We expect a dynamic range of 30-40 dB with accuracies of better than +/- 0.1 dB and +/- 1 degree of phase. We show preliminary results of the built and tested modules. Block diagrams of the down conversion scheme, and the architecture of a multi-signal X-band RF monitor and measurement system is illustrated. Measured results, and possible modifications and upgrades are presented