Apple TV, iPhone... How many more technological marvels can we take this week?
We decided to add our own surprise to a big technology week with the release of Painless Extraction 2.0!
Painless Extraction 2.0 adds some great new features to the previous version:
Capability to extract 1-4 channels of measurements from HP (Agilent) 8757 Series Scalar Analyzers, A new script creation page that allows the user to set up test scripts, which compare the measurements against user-defined test limits, and a test summary report is created.
8757 Series Scalar Analyzers:
Painless Extraction 2.0 has been designed to extract up to 4 channel measurements from HP 8757 series scalar analyzers. The extracted data is stored into the magnitude arrays of the S2P files (Phase arrays are zeroed out). Up to 4 channels can be extracted from the scalar analyzers. The 4 channels could be S-parameters (S11, S21), or they could be any channel setup from the scalar analyzer (A/R, B/R, C/R, A/B, etc.) Whatever the user sets up on the scalar analyzer channels, Painless Extraction retrieves the data from the analyzer, analyzes it, and stores it in "S2P format" files for future retrieval and data analysis.
Now the same capability we've provided for network analyzers (HP 8720 Series, HP 8510 Series, HP 8753 Series) is available for HP 8757 Series scalar analyzers. (Please note that we have verified the program specifically with a 4-Channel HP 8757C scalar analyzer.)
Statistical Analysis and Test Scripts:
We've added a new "tab" which can be used to perform statistical analysis on the various measurement channels. For example, let's say you have the network or scalar analyzer set up to take S11 (return loss) and S21 (gain) measurements over the frequency band of 1.0 to 3.0 GHz. You can very quickly set up a test script which sets the Pass/Fail limits for the S21/gain measurements, and sets up the Pass/Fail limits for the S11/return loss measurements. Now when you connect the amplifier, and the measurements on the analyzer are set up, you can retrieve the measurements from the analyzer and compare the measurements with the test limits and make Pass/Fail determinations. You can then save the test summary report in a tab-separated text format, which can be imported into spreadsheet programs (Excel and others).
This is a great feature if you are using a network analyzer or scalar analyzer for high volume production testing!
More information is available from our software products page, and the associated links for downloading a demo version of this program.
Thanks to Amelia for her great support in updating this program.
Bob Wood