About FFT Spectrum Analyzers: Application Note #1
About FFT Spectrum Analyzers: Application Note #1
About FFT Spectrum Analyzers: Application Note #1
com
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phone: (408)744-9040
www.thinkSRS.com
S/N = /(1 )
Time Record
2
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Uniform
The uniform window is actually no window at all. The time
record is used with no weighting. A signal will appear as
narrow as a single bin if its frequency is exactly equal to a
frequency bin. (It is exactly periodic within the time record.)
If its frequency is between bins, it will affect every bin of the
spectrum. These two cases also have a great deal of amplitude
variation between them (up to 4 dB).
In general, this window is only useful when looking at
transients which do not fill the entire time record.
Hanning
The Hanning window is the most commonly used window. It
has an amplitude variation of about 1.5 dB (for signals
between bins) and provides reasonable selectivity. Its filter
rolloff is not particularly steep. As a result, the Hanning
window can limit the performance of the analyzer when
looking at signals close together in frequency and very
different in amplitude.
Flattop
The Flattop window improves on the amplitude accuracy of
the Hanning window. Its between-bin amplitude variation is
about 0.02 dB. However, the selectivity is a little worse.
Unlike the Hanning, the Flattop window has a wide pass band
and very steep rolloff on either side. Thus, signals appear wide
but do not leak across the whole spectrum.
Blackman-Harris
The Blackman-Harris window is a very good window to use
with SRS FFT analyzers. It has better amplitude accuracy
(about 0.7 dB) than the Hanning, very good selectivity, and
the fastest filter rolloff. The filter is steep and narrow and
reaches a lower attenuation than the other windows. This
allows signals close together in frequency to be distinguished,
even when their amplitudes are very different.
Kaiser
The Kaiser window, which is available on the SR780 and
SR785 only, combines excellent selectivity and reasonable
accuracy (about 0.8 dB for signals between exact bins). The
Kaiser window has the lowest side-lobes and the least
broadening for non-bin frequencies. Because of these
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Linear Averaging
Linear averaging combines N (number of averages) spectra
with equal weighting in either RMS, Vector or Peak Hold
fashion. When the number of averages has been completed,
the analyzer stops and a beep is sounded. When linear
averaging is in progress, the number of averages completed is
continuously displayed below the averaging indicator at the
bottom of the screen.
Auto ranging is temporarily disabled when a linear average is
in progress. Be sure that you don't change the input range
manually. Changing the range during a linear average
invalidates the results.
Exponential Averaging
Vector Averaging
Vector averaging averages the complex FFT spectrum. (The
real part is averaged separately from the imaginary part.) This
can reduce the noise floor for random signals since they are
not phase coherent from time record to time record.
Vector averaging requires a trigger. The signal of interest must
be both periodic and phase synchronous with the trigger.
Otherwise, the real and imaginary parts of the signal will not
add in phase, and instead will cancel randomly.
With vector averaging, the real and imaginary parts (as well as
phase displays) are correctly averaged and displayed. This is
because the complex information is preserved.
Peak Hold
Peak Hold is not really averaging. Instead, the new spectral
magnitudes are compared to the previous data, and if the new
data is larger, the new data is stored. This is done on a
frequency bin-by-bin basis. The resulting display shows the
peak magnitudes which occurred in the previous group of
spectra.
Peak Hold detects the peaks in the spectral magnitudes and
only applies to Spectrum, PSD and Octave Analysis
measurements. However, the peak magnitude values are
stored in the original complex form. If the real or imaginary
part (or phase) is being displayed for spectrum measurements,
the display shows the real or imaginary part (or phase) of the
complex peak value.
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Overlap
Octave Analysis
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phone: (408)744-9040
www.thinkSRS.com