NSI Short Course 2010

NSI will once again be offering our annual Near-field Antenna Measurement short course March 2 – 5th at our Torrance, CA facility. This 4-day course covers both theoretical and practical aspects of near-field antenna measurements and is intended for the engineers and technicians using NSI antenna test systems, or individuals wanting to learn more about near-field measurements.  The presenters for this course are among the leading experts in this field and provide a wide range of expertise covering theory, application, software, and instrumentation aspects of near-field antenna testing.

Seating for this popular course is limited and available on a first come, first serve basis. We still have a few slots open, so make your reservation soon!  Online brochure and registration form may be downloaded from our website at:
http://www.nearfield.com/News/Courses/NSI_Course_Brochure_2010.pdf

Or, contact our sales department at 310-525-7098 for more details.  

NSI Supplies Sub—mmWave Planar Near-Field Scanner to the University of Waterloo

NSI recently delivered a NSI-300V-6x6  planar near-field scanner to the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, ON, Canada that will be used to make measurements up to 500 GHz. The scanner was outfitted with a granite base and NSI patented laser optics sub-system to support mmWave measurements, and interfaces with an Agilent PNA-X based RF sub-system. The test system allows for scanning a surface area of 6' x 6' (1.8 m x 1.8 m) in a vertical configuration and is ideal for measuring high gain antennas. The University of Waterloo will be using this test system to measure electromagnetic fields very close to conformal (planar or quasi-planar) complex antennas, circuits, and wave scatterers over a wide range of frequencies up to 500 GHz. As a fundamental scientific research tool, this unique setup will be used to investigate complex and novel electromagnetic structures and phenomena over a broad range of applications including radio communication, sensing, and imaging.  This scanner delivery represents the highest frequency near-field test system built by NSI for an academic institution.  NSI has provided systems for mmWave applications up to 900 GHz.

NSI 2010 Tradeshows

This year NSI will be participating in at least 10 Tradeshows and conferences throughout the world, including India, Europe, Canada and the USA.  NSI will be demonstrating its hardware and software at shows like EuCAP, MTT-IMS2010, AP-S,  AST, LAPC, and AMTA 2010 which will be held in Atlanta Georgia this year. If you are planning to attend any of these shows, please make plans to come by the NSI booth and visit our sales engineers as they are always happy to hear from you, our customers, and answer any questions you might have. 

See NSI at other tradeshows and short courses during 2010.

ATMS Conference in New Delhi, India

Come see us at the 3rd annual Antenna Test & Measurement Society conference being held at The Hans Hotel in New Delhi, India on February 11-13th. 

ATMS is a non-profit professional organization focused on the design and evaluation of antenna measurement facilities, innovative antenna measurements, and test instrumentation.  The annual conference attracts attendees from a variety of backgrounds including R&D companies, Government Agencies, Industry and Academia.  

NSI will be participating in this year’s event as an exhibitor and in the technical program. In our booth, we will be highlighting our NSI-700S-10 system and performing live Spherical Near-Field antenna measurement demonstrations.

NSI, ETS-Lindgren and Agilent will be jointly presenting a tutorial on antenna testing on 11 Feb 2010. NSI’s Greg Masters will be presenting: “An Introduction to Antenna Testing” and “Near-field Test Techniques”. For more information, visit the ATMS 2010 website.

We hope to see you there!

NSI Frequency Bands Script

In this newsletter, we are featuring our Frequency Bands Script. This script allows you to save and recall RF system settings for various NSI2000 RF configurations. It is especially useful for systems with distributed frequency NSI Panther or Agilent PNA receiver RF systems that use multipliers and a frequency converter. Instead of manually setting RF parameters (such as harmonics, source powers, averages, IFBWs, offsets, ratios, IF input paths, etc…) each time, the settings can be saved to a user-defined configuration and then easily recalled to restore settings, saving you both time and avoiding RF system setup errors.

Shown above is the Frequency Bands Script user menu that allows you to create, edit, and recall configurations.   To save the current configuration, select the Define New…. Button and enter a name.  To restore a configuration, select the configuration name form the list of saved configurations and click OK.  To overwrite an existing configuration with the current settings, again select the configuration name and choose Overwrite.  Select Delete to remove a selected configuration from the list of saved configurations.

Could it be any simpler? Here’s how it works: The script queries the receiver property pages for all available properties and saves them to a .ini file located in the Nsi2000\Dlls folder. To restore a saved configuration, the script reads the saved properties and sets them automatically. The script does not need to know anything about the properties available, which allows it to work for all RF instruments and hardware configurations.

Please contact your local NSI sales engineer if you would like to obtain this script, or for additional information regarding the NSI scripting capability available with our NSI2000 Professional Edition software.

You may also visit our website at http://www.nearfield.com/sales/software.htm to learn more about our NSI 2000 scripting.

Stay tuned for more featured scripts in future NSI Newsletters!

Learn More About Near-field Antenna Measurements

If you've wondered about near-field measurements and whether they can improve your antenna measurements, see NSI's Near-field 101 page for a short tutorial on near-field measurements or view our on-line videos at http://www.nearfield.com/AMTV/index.htm.