HP8562B Spectrum Analyzer repair

Want to take a screenshot over the GPIB bus?

I once acquired a broken spectrum analyzer for free. There is absolutely no way I could afford to buy an analyzer like the HP 8562B, but it sure would be a useful instrument, so there was some incentive to try to repair it.

The problem in this instrument was that it did not display any signals, no matter what I fed it. Only the local oscillator's feedthrough signal was visible on the display at 0 Hz, and its level was too high, according to the service manual. After some testing of front-end components (attenuator and coaxial switch), some testing with the 0 Hz signal (its shape responds to the resolution bandwidth setting), and some reading of the service manual, I concluded the problem must be in the front-end mixer. No news here, that's where the problem always is in a spectrum analyzer.

Opening up the instrument, the 1st mixer was immediately obvious. It is a dual-band mixer, which either upconverts low-band (0–2.9 GHz) signals to the 1st IF of 3.9107 GHz, or downconverts high-band (2.75–22 GHz, in five segments) signals directly to the 2nd IF of 310.7 MHz. Not having a signal generator for the gigahertz range, I could not test the high bands, but the low band (which is of more interest to me anyway) certainly was not working.

I watched eBay for a long time, hoping to find a replacement mixer at a reasonable price, but that did not happen. So I searched Mini-Circuits for an upconversion mixer that would handle the low band RF range and a 3.9107–6.8107 GHz LO at suitable signal levels. I ordered a ZX05-U742MH-S+ mixer, which is a level 13 (+13 dBm LO power) mixer for 0.1–7400 MHz.

Here the replacement mixer is connected to the analyzer using whatever SMA jumper cables I had on hand. (Later I fabricated proper connections with semirigid coax.) The low-band input signal is fed into the mixer's IF port, the swept LO signal goes to the LO port, and the RF port feeds into the analyzer's 1st IF filter and second mixer. (The input and IF signals for the high bands are not connected anywhere, nor are the band-select and bias voltage lines, which originally connected to the Dual Mixer.)

With the new mixer, the analyzer's 300 MHz calibration signal could be seen, surprisingly at a nearly correct amplitude as well. I then attached an antenna, and could measure this spectrum from the FM radio broadcast band. Several hours of playing with the instrument confirmed that it does indeed work now. Its sensitivity is on par with the instrument's original specifications, and frequency resolution is excellent. The frequency response with the new mixer is, of course, not especially flat, but above 10 MHz it's good enough to be useful, with an error of less than 5 dB (using my E4421B as a reference). Amplitude linearity is very good, of course. Perhaps I should look into calibrating the analyzer over frequency—certainly the original mixer was no more ideal than the Mini-Circuits one, so a calibration curve must be hidden somewhere in the service menus. But that's not a big deal anyhow. The main point is that now I can at least see signals in the frequency domain and measure their frequencies, even if I still cannot measure their amplitudes with any accuracy.

Of course, the high bands do not work in my analyzer, because there is no high band mixer. If I ever obtain a signal generator for such frequencies, I may open the analyzer to test the high band section of the original Dual Mixer. If it works, I could install it beside the Mini-Circuits mixer and have both worlds. That would only require a coaxial relay to switch the LO signal to the appropriate mixer. But even without the high bands, this instrument is worth much more than the 50 euros I spent on the new mixer! (I've seen a HP 8562B going for 6500 euros, albeit fully functioning of course.)

Incidentally, if you want to get a screenshot from the 8562B (or possibly some other similar HP spectrum analyzer) over the GPIB interface, here's how. Although photos of the green display are much more cool... :)

If you download the manual for the HP 85640A tracking generator from the Keysight website (that's ex-Agilent), you'll see HP's own tracking generator used a chain of frequency multipliers and mixers to produce the 3.9107 GHz +/– something signal:

In its time, that may well have been a reasonable way of synthesizing the signal, but each frequency multiplier and mixer produces all kinds of artefacts, requiring extensive filtering as well (not shown in the figure).

Enter the modern high-resolution fractional-N PLL. The Analog Devices ADF4157 is a PLL with 6 GHz bandwidth (sufficient for our use), it can directly use the 300 MHz calibrator frequency as a reference (many other PLLs need a much lower reference frequency), and with its sigma-delta fractional-N interpolator it can generate frequencies with sub-Hz resolution, which are programmed via its digital 3-wire interface. With this fantastic device and a suitable VCO, the tracking generator comprises more or less the following (give or take a couple of amplifiers and attenuators):

A single, programmable PLL that directly synthesizes the signal we need—that's simple enough for me to build! And that signal comes direct from the VCO, so it should be reasonably clean even without any filters. The PIC16F690 microcontroller is only used to program the ADF4157 to the desired frequency, so it's not really part of the signal path.

The ADF4157 only costs a few euros (plus considerable shipping expense, as I could not get it from any local suppliers). But surely all the frequency multipliers and mixers and filters would still cost more. (I've seen a HP 85640A going for 2000 euros.)

This project is still ongoing. Stay tuned (pun intended)...