Joey Gill is chief engineer at WPSD-TV in Paducah, Ky. The Rigol folks have brought the price of a quality spectrum analyzer down to the point that almost any broadcaster (or individual) can afford one.

When you consider all of the features the analyzer possesses, it’s really amazing that it costs less than $1,300.

While it would be nice if it operated above 2 GHz (and could be powered from a 12 Volt DC supply for mobile applications), these aren’t really deal breakers, considering its price. The buttons are very solid, and the unit feels very “stocky” when you pick it up. However, I can tell you that the unit operated for about a month in my office, and I played with it at every opportunity (I even used it to troubleshoot a couple of wireless mic problems). With an instrument as complex as the Rigol DSA 815, there’s no way to write about each and every menu. I even looped the tracking generator back into the DSA 815 and confirmed that it works as specified. Obviously most users don’t expect to use their spectrum analyzer as a frequency counter, but it’s comforting to know that the Rigol is this accurate.ĭuring the next few days I kept the unit on, looking at our competitors’ ATSC signals, and checking out some amateur radio transmissions I found. The tolerance is ±54 Hz, so 19,392,657 is well within the margin of error. I need to mention that measurement was made through a Harris TFX-1transport frequency extractor which allows the use of a frequency counter to confirm compliance and monitor the SMPTE 310 stream for primary clock reference (PCR) errors. After a quick calibration of the Rigol, I turned on its averaging function, expanded out the span, and read a center frequency of 19,392,657 Hz. According to my HP 53132A, that frequency was 19,392,655 Hz. As a test of the Rigol’s frequency accuracy, I connected the output of our ATSC SMPTE 310 encoder to the unit. The output from the filter tap of an ATSC low-power transmitter operating on Channel 36 as observed on the Rigol spectrum analyzer.

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