N5106A/N5110A Waveform

You can save 89600 traces or recordings containing zoom (I/Q) time data to a N5106A Waveform or N5110A Waveform (*.BIN). You can also recall recordings in these formats.

Recordings from the Keysight N5120 Baseband Studio for CPRI RE Test are supported, but for recall only. The N5120 recordings still use the N5106A Waveform file (*.BIN) format but while recordings made by the N5120 can be recalled, recordings cannot be saved to be used by the N5120.

You can also use N5106A Waveform files with the "Keysight 5106A Baseband Studio for Waveform Streaming" to stream data to an Keysight signal generator.

For most recordings, the VSA makes an internal copy of the file to use for playback. For N51xxA Waveform files, the VSA does not make a copy because the files are usually quite large and copying them slows down recalling the recording. Because the files are not copied, you must not move the N51xxA Waveform file while playing it back as a recording.

The following restrictions apply to the N51xxA formats:

Both save and recall functions must use the appropriate "N51xxA Waveform (*.bin)" file type
Multi-channel recordings are not supported. If a multiple channel recording is saved to this file format, the data for channels other than channel 1 will be discarded.

Data format

The N5106A Waveform file contains an even number of unscaled 2's complement, 16-bit, byte-reversed, big-endian I/Q binary samples with no descriptive information. The N5110A Waveform file is the same format, except that the data is expressed in little-endian format.

N5106A – Big Endian (byte swapped on x86 processors)
N5110A – Little Endian (not swapped on x86 processors)

The 89600 VSA stores a Data Header for the N51xxA Waveform in a separate file with the same name as the waveform with ".TXT" appended to the file name. The Data Header is stored in the same format as a Text (Tab delimited) file. When you recall the N51xxA Waveform file into the 89600 VSA, this text file containing the Data Header must be in the same directory as the waveform (.BIN) file. If the Data Header file is not found, the 89600 VSA applies the current measurement's Input Range, Span, and Center Frequency settings to the waveform.