Agilent E4407B IVI Driver: Problem with Occupied Bandwidth Measurement

[jackson 005]

Hello,

I am having a problem with the occupied bandwidth measurement VI's for Agilents ESA 4407B spec a. I have the power measurements working, but I have been getting the following error whenever I try to measure occupied bandwidth.

Possible reason(s):
Driver Status: (Hex 0xBFFA0010) Invalid value for parameter or property.

Primary Error: (Hex 0xBFFA0010) Invalid value for parameter or property.
Secondary Error: (Hex 0xBFFC0003) Parameter 3 out of range, or error occurred while setting Parameter 3.
Elaboration: OBW Average Count

I have fooled around with a multitude of things, but can't seem to get it to work. What I want to do is take the power measurements and then follow with the occupied bandwidth measurements. Does the span of the Occupied bandwidth VI have to be a certain value for this to work. I have tried 1,2,3 MHZ. I have tried this on the actual device and it works fine, but as soon as you use the driver, it fails. I've attached the code which I am trying to run, if anyone wants to take a look at it. I know the ESA is a popular device, so any help would be much appreciated.

[JohnM 64]

Hello jackson,

I personally have not had any experience with the ESA 4407B, but I decided to take a look at the code and see if I could help anyway. Since I am not familiar with the instrument, I am not sure if any of these options will work, but I have some ideas on things to take a look at. First, I noticed that the VI you attached is basically the Acquire Y Trace Example.vi with a couple of extra VIs added to it, and I believe these VIs are the ones that are giving the error. One thing to try is to try to get these OBW VIs to work on their own, apart from the rest of the configuration, before adding them into the overall application. It just makes for easier overall troubleshooting.

Another thing that caught my attention is that I see you have 1000000 wired into the OBW Percent Power input. Once again, I am not familiar with the device, so you could actually need one million percent as an input, but I have made errors before when passing values that are supposed to be percentages that I have not converted correctly. Just something to check.

Finally, I noticed that there is an agesa Measure OBW.vi that is almost the same as the agesa Read OBW.vi that you are using, except that it resets the device to factory default values. You may want to give this VI a try and see if it corrects this error by setting everything back to default values. If we can get this one to work, we should be able to see what we're changing from the factory that is causing this error.

And as you said, there may be someone else out there that has used this instrument that can be of more help. Good luck with your application!

john
Applications Engineer

[jackson 005]

I have tried your suggestions, but get the error with the OBW configure VI. It does not like the span which I am giving it. I have tried different spans, but can't get it to work. Anyone else have this problem? I am now trying to get it to work on the PSA E4440A. I will contact agilent to see if others have gotten then same problem.

Thanks for your help John.

Jackson

[gagi1]

Hello Jackson,

The driver was tested with the firmware revision A.08.00 and later. It is recommended to use the latest firmware revision. What is the firmware revision that you have? You can find out the firmware revision and options installed using the following commands:

*IDN? =>
:SYST:OPT? =>

Regards,
Vesna

[Zdenek Rykala]

Hello Jackson,

Invalid value should come from range check callback. It’s very hard finding all dependency on spectrum analyzer during driver development.

When errors like invalid value, invalid configurations are returned from the driver and you are sure that configuration and settings is correct, try disabling range checking. Range checking can be disabled in NI-MAX or you can use agesa Init With Options.vi and use following option string
"RangeCheck=0,QueryInstrStatus=1,Cache=1"
When some configurations will not set correctly try use 0 for Cache too.

If you will find any inconsistencies between versions with enabled/disabled range check, report it to NI. Please attach your instrument configuration: model, firmware revision and installed options.

Zdenek

[jackson 005]

Thanks Zdenek,

I tried your suggestion and it works.  Thanks for your help. 

Jackson

[dannnnny]

Jackson 005,

I'm working with the E4407B for the first time.  Can I get a copy of any vi files you have made for this spectrum analyzer please.

Thanks,

Dannnnny