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Interference Hunting, Part 4 of 4: Storing and sharing captures, the interference hunter’s safety net Thursday, August 4, 2016 by: Robin Jackman

When hitting the street to track down a source of interference, how many time have you gone out with your spectrum analyzer and then when you got back realized you forgot to make one particular measurement? This is particularly annoying when the site you were investigating is in a remote location with limited access. In such situations, would it be helpful to know that your Tektronix spectrum …

Interference Hunting, Part 3 of 4: Use Mask Search to automatically discover when interference is happening Tuesday, August 2, 2016 by: Robin Jackman

When RF systems are being compromised with interference it’s often very time consuming to manually monitor the spectrum waiting for something to happen. While there are critical situations when the time investment is justified, the reality is that as interference hunters we need some automated tools that can alleviate the tedious work of staring at a span waiting for something to happen. The good …

Interference Hunting, Part 2 of 4: How often is the interference happening? Friday, July 29, 2016 by: Robin Jackman

In part one of this series, we discussed the importance of setting the correct RBW value so that a spectrum analyzer can mimic the sensitivity of the victim receiver, and some of the trade-offs that occur. Once we have made sure that our spectrum analyzer has enough sensitivity, how do we figure out how often the interference is occurring? Traditionally, the various trace modes available in a …

Interference Hunting, Part 1 of 4: Get the insight you need to see interference in a crowded spectrum Tuesday, July 26, 2016 by: Robin Jackman

In our highly wireless world, interference is an unwelcome addition to the equation that results in noise, interrupts cell phone calls and just generally messes up communication. In the case of cellular networks, interference is actually part of the network. While more networks today have built-in features to detect interference, these tools often lack context as they are geared towards only a few …