Analyser speeds up EMC emissions testing

As well as helping to speed up Tempest assessments on board naval vessels, the instrument can also combat the threat of IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and pinpoint suspicious transmissions from jamming devices, mobile phones, satellite phones and 2-way radios.

Manufactured by Narda Test Solutions, this hand-held unit uses its integral GPS receiver and a choice of three active directional antennas – covering frequencies from 20MHz to 6GHz – to establish the position of a signal source and display the relative bearing in a polar diagram.

The new version of the instrument offers a number of additional features, most notably the ability to switch to demodulation mode from spectrum analysis mode. This means that users can now intuitively search through the frequency band by simply moving the marker to the corresponding peak and listening in directly to the signals.

When tuned to a single frequency, the IDA can now record up to 250,000 measured values. For example, a resolution of 200 nanoseconds is possible for a recording time of 50 milliseconds. In addition, the instrument’s trigger functions, which are used to capture even rare events, are now saved automatically.

Existing IDA-3106 users can add the new features via a downloadable firmware upgrade.