ANTEM 2012 Addressing the challenges of phase-coherent high frequency measurements

This paper demonstrates the advantages of COTS architecture using the PXI platform in building a multichannel RF signal analyser, and explains how channel-to-channel phase-coherence is achieved, and contrasts the traditional approach of sharing reference clocks against sharing LO signals directly. In addition, the paper also discusses how factors such as phase noise, input bandwidth, SNR, environmental conditions and other characteristics can affect the phase coherence between multiple input channels.