Vector Signal Generator for the Automotive, IoT and Education Sectors

The new SMCV100B vector signal generator from Rohde & Schwarz (R&S) targets automotive, broadcast, navigation and wireless applications. According to the company, it is the first commercial multistandard platform and fully configurable with keycode options. The vector signal generator was engineered for numerous applications, ranging from the lab to production. 

The generator covers the 5G NR extended FR1 frequency range up to 7.125 GHz, having been designed for usage in mobile communications applications. It also uses the R&S WinIQSIM2 simulation software. This software supports all common cellular and wireless connectivity standards, including standards for IoT and Wi-Fi (802.11xx) and many more. In total, more than 30 standards are available, along with an arbitrary waveform generator to output user-defined signals.

The R&S SMCV100B supports analog and digital radio standards as well as second and third generation digital terrestrial and satellite based television standards. This is the first economy platform that supports ATSC 3.0 in addition to the DVB-T2 and DVB-S2X standards.

It uses an advanced direct RF concept to generate output signals for frequencies up to 2.5 GHz. This allows I/Q modulation and RF signal generation to be performed in the digital domain, virtually eliminating the I/Q imbalance errors and LO leakage commonly seen with conventional analog I/Q modulators. Thanks to the new concept, the SSB phase noise performance of the signal generator is very good. An analog mixing concept is used to generate frequencies above 2.5 GHz.

The Linux based platform is designed to be extensible using software options. All options are present in the device firmware and can be activated with option keys as needed. This includes frequency extension up to 6 GHz or 7.125 GHz, increasing the RF modulation bandwidth to 250 MHz, raising the RF output power to 23 dBm and waveform streaming with up to 60 MHz (75 Msymbol/s) RF bandwidth. The memory depth of the ARB generator can also be extended from 64 Msamples to 1 Gsample.