RF/IF Digitizer

October 1, 2010

ZTEC Instruments (Albuquerque, NM) and Astronics DME Corp. (East Aurora, NY) have developed the ZR8441 RF/IF digitizer. The digitizer comes standard with a full-featured, on-instrument spectrum analyzer. Technical specifications include real-time quadrature digital down conversion (DDC) with fractional resampling and decimation; vector signal analysis capability of 156.26 MHz instantaneous bandwidth; low noise floor and high dynamic range; all-digital frequency hopping; and real-time FPGA processing. To ease the transition from a bench-top spectrum analyzer to its modular instrument counterpart, the ZT8441 integrates with a familiar interface. Its modular architecture also provides interoperability with third-party RF modules, like RF down converters; the product offers bus master control of those RF instruments.