It’s easy to write specs on a datasheet. Product engineers might feel a little queasy about some of the specs claimed on their own product’s datasheet, but marketing and sales folks almost never do.
Unfortunately, when it comes to real-world RF performance, there often are no real specs or benchmarks in the datasheets–just unsubstantiated claims. Whose device or product can actually survive and thrive in an aggressive jamming environment? Whose can’t? The datasheet may make claims about linearity and sensitivity and may address some contrived scenarios programmed into a channel simulator, but that’s usually as far as they go. There’s typically no way to predict real-world performance from this limited data.
Traditionally, there were only two ways to address this uncertainty:
- Trust your gut and the vendor’s industry reputation.
- Commission a costly field test and perform a bake-off between vendors.
Let’s be honest, neither of these options is very attractive.
RF Players Expand the Options
An RF Recorder/RF Player can now provide a more attractive third option. You can bring your vendors’ devices into the lab and connect them to your RF Player to test under real world conditions. Or run your RF Recording library through your IP vendor’s MATLAB® models.
Once you start playing real-world RF recordings, the weak are quickly culled from the pack. It doesn’t take much time to get a sense of which devices have been carefully designed and validated against real-world signals.
RF Recorders Provide Technical Objectivity
Leading vendors are prepared for customers to evaluate their products with these techniques. If you’re the performance leader in the market, you might actually find that an RF Player is an outstanding sales tool to support customer demos and quickly expose your competitors’ weakness.