Together, the RFeye SenS Portable and DeepView software allow you to record high-fidelity, long-duration I/Q data. This could be hours or even days of data. However, what if the signal you are looking to record only occurs for a few milliseconds during a 24-hour period? You could wait until the signal appears (and potentially miss it) or maybe record the whole 24-hour period. Instead of creating terabytes of recorded data to search through, a new feature in DeepView allows you to record just the transient signals you are interested in when they occur. DeepView’s new mask and trigger functionality lets you trigger a recording on the SenS Portable using mask breaks.
To trigger a recording, you first need to set the triggering threshold. This could be a simple fixed level trigger but if you have specific signals you want to ignore, or your noise floor is dynamic, a mask can be more useful. Masks let you exclude specific areas of the spectrum you want to ignore. You can hand draw a mask, or you can let DeepView create a tailored mask. You can set DeepView to dynamically learn what is “normal” for the part of the spectrum you are interested in. A mask can then be created a few dB above “normal”.
Once you have created a mask, you can trigger a recording to start if a signal breaks the mask. DeepView has some clever features to make triggering even more flexible and useful. You can specify if you want the system to re-arm after a mask break occurs and also how many times you want it to re-arm. So, for example, if set to re-arm three times, it will make a recording for the 1st, 2nd and 3rd time the mask is broken, and then stop making any further recordings. Another great feature of the trigger functionality is the pre- and post-trigger buffers. To make sure you capture the full signal and any signal artifacts, you can tell DeepView to record data for a specified length of time before the signal starts and after the signal finishes.
Watch the short video that shows how quickly a mask and trigger can be set up and activated in DeepView.
If you would like more information on SenS Portable or DeepView, please get in touch and we would be happy to give you a full demonstration.
