The Agilent 4396B provides excellent RF vector network, spectrum, and optional impedance measurements for lab and production applications. Gain, phase, group delay, distortion, spurious, CN, and noise measurements often required for evaluating components and circuits can be measured using one instrument.

When combined with a test set, the 4396B provides reflection measurements, such as retu loss, and SWR, and S parameters. As a vector network analyzer, the 4396B operates from 100 kHz to 1.8 GHz with 1 mHz resolution and its integrated synthesized source provides -60 to +20 dBm of output power with 0.1 dB resolution. The dynamic magnitude and phase accuracy are +/-0.05 dB and +/-0.3 deg so that it can accurately measure gain and group delay flatness, which are becoming more important in mode electronics systems.

As a spectrum analyzer, the 4396B operates from 2 Hz to 1.8 GHz with resolution bandwidths (RBWs) spanning 1 Hz to 3 MHz in a 1-3-10 sequence. A fully-synthesized local oscillator allows stable and accurate frequency analysis. Direct A/D conversion (no LOG amplifier is used) results in +/-1.0 dB overall level accuracy. Noise sidebands fall below -105 dBc/Hz offset 10 kHz from carriers below 1 GHz, while sensitivity is -150 dBm/Hz at 10 MHz and -147 dBm/Hz at 1 GHz. In addition, with two independent display channels available, you can simultaneously view network and spectrum (or transmission and reflection) characteristics of the device under test in split-screen format. For example, an amplifier's frequency response (network measurement) and distortion (spectrum measurement) can be shown at the same time.