National Instruments USB-5684 RF Power Sensor Device

The USB-5684, a product offered by National Instruments (NI), is an RF Power Sensor Device developed particularly for the average and RMS power measurements for multiple applications in industrial operating conditions. Customers can purchase the NI USB-5684 device with NI part number 783986-01. The key advantages of using the USB-5684, due to which it is preferred in mobile and automated systems for signal measurement purposes, include the compact size and improved performance with fine precision and better accuracy over a wide frequency range of signal input.

The NI USB-5684 RF Power Sensor Device can be activated in two different ways. The hardware-triggering requires a manual external input signal for the device’s activation, while it can also be triggered internally through a signal from the software. In the latter case, the USB-5684 can measure complex digital waveforms, such as WiMAX, LTE, GSM, and EDGE. 

The National Instruments USB-5684 RF Power Sensor Device can operate over a wide frequency range from 10 MHz to 18 MHz, with a typical signal-to-channel bandwidth of 50 kHz. The sampling rate of the USB-5684 device is 10 kS/s. The NI USB-5684 is compatible with input signals in the range of -60 dBm to 20 dBm. The USB-5684 features three measurement resolutions: 1 dB, 0.1 dB, and 0.01 dB. The USB-5684 RF Power Sensor Device’s aperture time lies in the range of 0.01 ms to 1 s, depending on the mode of operation. The maximum permissible input voltages of the NI USB-5684 power sensor are ±20 VDC and 5.5 V at the RF port and trigger input respectively.