We have an Agilent E4416A power meter with firmware version A1.04.08. While I know the power meter is supposed to load the sensor's cal. fac. table automatically when I connected a 8482A sensor it did not seem to do so, the 8482A cal fac table in the power meters memory did not match the one on the sensor and the default table has only a ref. cal of 100%. This remains the same after preset and after preforming zero+cal.
Channel setup after preset is:
Sensor Mode: AVG only(greyed out)
Range: AUTO(greyed out)
Filter: Auto
Duty Cycle: Off
Offset: Off
Cal Fac: 100.0%
CF Table: Off
FDO Table: Off
Video Avg: Off (greyed out)
Video B/W: Off(greyed out)
Step Detect: On
What are the settings supposed to be for the power sensor and how large an error would a wrong cal. fac. generate? Also how can I check if the power meter did in fact recieve the sensor's cal fac. table correctly?
Channel setup after preset is:
Sensor Mode: AVG only(greyed out)
Range: AUTO(greyed out)
Filter: Auto
Duty Cycle: Off
Offset: Off
Cal Fac: 100.0%
CF Table: Off
FDO Table: Off
Video Avg: Off (greyed out)
Video B/W: Off(greyed out)
Step Detect: On
What are the settings supposed to be for the power sensor and how large an error would a wrong cal. fac. generate? Also how can I check if the power meter did in fact recieve the sensor's cal fac. table correctly?
That explains why the power meter didn't seem to be loading the table automatically and I had to input it manually. So what are the settings supposed to be for the power sensor and how large an error would a wrong cal. fac. generate? Also how can I check if the power meter did in fact recieve the sensor's cal fac. table correctly?
For example if the cal factor for a power sensor at 1 GHz was 99, but the value loaded into the power meter was 100, then you would have a -1% error. If you were measuring a 0.001 watt RF signal (1 mW or 0 dBm) the power meter would actually display a value 1% lower or .00099 W. In dB a 1% error is about 0.05 dB error. So instead of reading 0 dBm on the above example you would be reading -0.05 dBm
You can either enter the cal factor into the E4416A as a single frequency and value by pressing the hard key [Frequency/Cal Fac] and manually enter the value using the softkeys. Or you can setup the table by pressing the hardkey [System] then press the softkey {Tables} > {Sensor Cal Tables}. You can then select the table for your specific sensor, or create your own custom table. Go to your specific table and press {Edit Table} and you can now see the values that are entered into this table. You can change them if necessary.
I guess I wasn't clear about my problem with getting the correct cal table. The question is not how to enter the values, but rather after having entered the correct values into the table what settings do I need to change so that the power meter will read the cal. fac. values from the table in question?
You can confirm this by going to the [Channel] key. Look halfway down the display to the entry "CF Table". It should be displaying the cal factor table you selected. That's all there is too it.
Is it the same case with E4412A power sensor?
BR, Jaakko
This is true for both a manually entered table (8482A) or a table from sensor memory (E4412A).