Just a decade ago, signal analyzers with 20 MHz of instantaneous bandwidth were considered fairly wideband. Ten years from now a signal analyzer with no less than 2 GHz of bandwidth will likely be considered entry-level.
If you’re wondering how the industry is going to get to 2 GHz of bandwidth, a good place to start is Moore’s law, which theorizes that transistor density on an integrated circuit doubles every two years. And for those in the computing industry, Moore’s law remains a strong indicator of the ever-increasing capability of computing technology today.
Converter technology has been a major contributing factor that drives innovation in the RF and wireless industry. But as Moore’s law continues to allow new instrumentation to accelerate converter technology and reach higher bandwidths for standards such as 5G, engineers will soon be using new measurement approaches and techniques ushered in by next-generation RF signal analyzers (and even oscilloscopes).
Learn more about how Moore’s law is advancing instrumentation on page 14 of the Automated Test Outlook.
