Agilent E8363B PNA - no response during ECal

[davidpcl]

I've posted a question with Agilent about this,but thought I'd also put in on here to see if anyone has had a similar experience and found any sort of solution.

I am controlling an Agilent E8363B PNA using a SCPI LXI interface. When I do an ECal I want to be able to poll the instrument every say second to see if it's finished using *OPC?. Unfortunately It appears that whilst it's doing an ECal it almost appears to shutdown it's comm link as none of the queries I've sent it yield a response, and the instrument doesn't set any bits on the VISA bus to say that it's busy.

The only solution I really have is to put a delay in my code, but this is hardly an elegant solution so I'm looking to maybe try and calculate or predict using number of points and IF bandwidth how long a calibration is likely to take, but this still isn't particulrly great, so maybe there are some other possibilities out there?

cheers,

[JonBowers]

Hi David,

I think you have probably got right idea in a delay. Can you poll the device anyway and just have small timeout for the VISA read?

Regards

Jon B
Applications Engineer
NI UK & Ireland

[davidpcl]

Hi Jon,

At present I have it polling every second with a *IDN? which means that a VISA error is being thrown on every poll which I then discard - this isn't ideal, and causes the instrument to also throw an error once it has finished the ecal. It's not ideal, and I'm slightly uncomfortable with it, but it basically works.

Thanks for you response.

[JonBowers]

Hi David,

I know it's not best practice, but pretty much all you can do unless you hear back from Agilent.

Regards

Jon B
Applciations engineer
NI UK & Ireland

[kaylenh]

I'm fairly new to controlling a PNA with LabVIEW and I'm having difficulty configuring the drivers to perform a calibration using an ECal.  I am using a N5230A PNA, but I'm just interested in specifically which drivers you used and in which order? Thanks.

Kaylen

[Mihir]

Hi there.  I'm fairly new to labview, and am currently retrieving s-parameters from a PNA analyzer (agilent 8362B).  I'm using the drivers found for this analyzer on the ni website, and am trying to add a calibration feature that allows me to calibrate directly from the labview program rather than the pna analyzer.  Does anyone know which file I should look at or what others steps I should be taking?  So far whatever I use results in an error, such as CALC measurement selection set to none (error 103) 

thanks in advance

[jjp377]

There are two LabVIEW drivers for Agilent PNA models.  The project-style driver includes several Calibration VIs.

Do you get any errors when you run Initialize.vi?

Is the Instrument Resource Name listed in the pull-down menu the same as the one configured in Measurement and Automation Explorer?

[Mihir]

no I don't get any errors when running initialize.vi.  I only receive the errors when running the calibration files.  I'm trying to perform an E-cal, but I'm kinda unsure as to what else I should be inputting into the calibration vi.  The one I'm using right now is "measure calibration standards.vi".  The instrument name is the same. 

[davidpcl]

Hi Mihir,

Don't know if this will help or not, but this is how I do a calibration with the E8364B :-

• Create a measurement for the parameters you want to calibrate for i.e. start - stop frequencies etc
• Make sure you have the measurement selected using CALC[CHAN]: PAR:SEL '%s'
• Select your calibration method using SENS[CHAN]:CORR:COLL:METH %s
• Select whether to calibrate for isolation or not using SENS[CHAN]:CORR:ISOL [ON|OFF]
• Select your measurement standard SENS[CHAN]:CORR:COLL %s  - this will kick off the calibration
• Send a *OPC? and read until you get a response - this will indicate that the calibration has finished
• Name the cal you've just created using SENS:CORR:CSET: DESC '%s'
• Save your calset using MMEM:STOR:CORR '%s'

If you want to validate your cal then do the following :-

• Select measurement for cal check using SENS:CORR:CCH: PAR '%s'
• Instruct instrument to collect calibration verification data SENS:CORR:CCH ECAL1
• Use *OPC? again to wait until verfication has completed
• Display verification data on screen by dividing Data/Memory :CALC[CHAN]:MATH:FUNC DIV;
• *OPC? again
• Autoscale the display and *OPC?
• Read back your verifcation data using CALC%d: DATA? FDATA; - this will give you an array of cal error values

Hope that helps,

P.S just been over the post again as there were smilies everywhere! - added some spaces where there should be any - should be fairly obvious where they are

Message Edited by davidpcl on 06-07-2007 11:53 AM

Message Edited by davidpcl on 06-07-2007 11:53 AM

Message Edited by davidpcl on 06-07-2007 11:54 AM

[Mihir]

Hey david.  I followed your steps, and the calibration is working great now.  Thanks alot for the help.