Getting trace data through R&S ZVR Vector Network Analyzer in a tabular format

[vivek.madhavan.13]

Hello,

I am working on automating some network analyzer measurements. I am using the ZVR network analyzer from Rohde & Schwarz and I am communicating with the instrument through GPIB. One of the measurements requires me to get the values of the S parameters for a whole frequency range and display it in a tabular fashion which can then be exported to excel.

So, how can I make labview to get me this trace data of frequency and the corresponding S-parameter value without using the marker function? I was unable to find a functional block that could do this function in the Instrument driver palette for this instrument which is available through the NI / Rohde & Schwarz website.

I would really appreciate any comments in this regard.

Thank You,

Vivek

[MM_RohdeSchwarz · Accepted solution]

Hi Vivek,

in that LabVIEW driver there are 2 VIs:

RSZV Getting Started.vi

RSZV Application Example.vi

There you find how to read entire trace.

Regards,

Milo

[vivek.madhavan.13]

Thank you very much Milo. It worked.

Regards,

Vivek

[K@rthi9099]

Hi,

If I use the same application example I am only able to get only y axis value not the X axis value. Because the data ouput is 1 D array. Do you have any more possible example with 2 D array ?

Regards,

Karthik

[Case_in_Point]

Hey K@rthi,

This driver is actually maintained by R&S, not National Instruments. I looked at the LLB you get with their driver, and it doesn't seem apparent how you could change the output from their function calls. However, if you wanted to get some more information, it'd be best to try and reach out to Rohde & Schwarz, since this isn't an NI maintained driver.

Regards,

Cason

NI Applications Engr.

[vivek.madhavan.13]

Hi Karthik,

Its been a long time I used the ZVR VNA, so cannot verify how I managed this. However, if you know the number of data points, freq_start and freq_stop, generating your own array of X values shouldn't be that difficult, I suppose.

Total number of Y values (Yn = N-1)

Where N is the total number of data points (If N = 401 then Yn = 400)

Total number of Y values will also be equal to total number of X values (Xn = Yn)

So if you know your frequency range your X values will be of the form [freq_start + i x (freq_stop - freq_start)/N] where i ranges from 0 to N.

However, it would be ideal to have a way to extract the X values from the VNA.

[K@rthi9099]

Thanks Mr.Vivek 

I think so that form would give me x axis value. Let me try it.