Hardware Implementation of a Broad-Band Vector Spectrum Analyzer Based on Randomized Sampling

A hardware prototype of a vector spectrum analyzer, which is based on an aliasing-free randomized sampling strategy, has been fully designed and implemented. The instrument exploits a couple of identical independently programmable acquisition channels, capable of providing input signal samples at instants that can be very closed onto the time-axis (tens of ps), with a maximum single channel throughput rate of 500 kS/s. This allows for the practical implementation of the randomized periodic sampling with uniform jitter scheme the instrument is based on. In addition, accurate 12-bit ADCs can be adopted within each channel, which are essential in order to apply to the signal samples the numerical algorithms devoted to the estimation of input harmonic components.