Concepts and features
R&S
®
ZNA
276
User Manual 1178.6462.02 ─ 20
4.7.25
RFFE GPIO interface
Option R&S
ZNA-B15
The trend in mobile radio communication is towards higher scale of integration of exter-
nal components such as filters, switches, low noise and power amplifiers. The require-
ment for test and measurement equipment is to make it possible to control those com-
ponents directly from the instrument without the need of additional external tools, e.g. a
USB to RFFE adapter.
For these kinds of applications, Rohde & Schwarz has developed an RFFE-GPIO
extension board for the R&S
ZNA. This board is equipped with a 25-pin female con-
nector interface providing 2 independent RF Front-End (RFFE) interfaces according to
the MIPI® Alliance "System Power Management Interface Specification" and 10 Gen-
eral Purpose Input/Output (GPIO) pins. RFFE command execution and GPIO voltage
settings can be synchronized with the sweep (sweep sequencer functionality); how-
ever, RFFE read is not supported in sweep sequencer mode.
Variants
The following variants of the RFFE-GPIO extension board are available:
●
R&S
ZNA-B15 variant
02
, order number 1332.4575.
02
●
R&S
ZNA-B15 variant
03
, order number 1332.4575.
03
, including current and volt-
age measurements for all RFFE and GPIO pins
Information about the voltage and current levels is available in
There is no need to perform any kind of calibration or alignment of the extension board.
The analyzer firmware automatically detects and supports it. The controlled devices
can be hot-plugged.
Risk of board and instrument damage
Please
turn off the R&S
ZNA
before mounting an internal RFFE-GPIO extension
board R&S
ZNA-B15. A hot plug installation is not supported and can damage board
and instrument.
Current and voltage measurements (variant 03 only)
For test purposes, variant 03 of the R&S
ZNA-B15 can apply constant, pin-specific out-
put voltages not only to the GPIO pins but also to the individual RFFE pins. Further-
more it can measure the (resulting) voltages/currents at these pins using suitable shunt
resistances. The firmware takes 500 samples per millisecond (and pin) and calculates
the average voltages/currents over the configured measurement time.
Optional extensions and accessories