Keysight Labs | Breadboards - Trash or Treasure? | S-Parameter Bandwidth Test + Wave Winners @KeysightLabs | Uploaded March 2020 | Updated October 2024, 11 hours ago.
Is the frequency limit of a solderless breadboard really 10 MHz? The VNA will tell us!
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Wave 2020 overview: bit.ly/Wave2020Blog
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How fast of a signal can a breadboard handle? The answer is not super straightforward, but a simple S21 S-parameter test with the vector network analyzer will give us a lot of insights!
We test a single row, a single row with jumpers, two rows jumper wired together, and multiple rows chained together with a TON of jumpers.
Keysight Bench Facebook page:
facebook.com/keysightbench
Keysight RF Facebook page:
facebook.com/keysightrf
EEs Talk Tech Electrical Engineering podcast:
eestalktech.com
youtube.com/KeysightPodcasts
Check out our blog:
bit.ly/KeysTechBlogs
Twitter: @DanielBogdanoff:
twitter.com/DanielBogdanoff
Is this breadboard as good as garbage or can you actually do real prototyping with one? In a moment we’re going to break out the good ‘ol network analyzer and find out.
Conventional internet wisdom tells us that you shouldn’t use a breadboard for signals over 10 MHz. Is that true? Where did that frequency limit come from? I couldn’t find any answers I liked, so today we’re going to actually quantify the performance of a breadboard.
Breadboards get a bad rap, but they are fantastically helpful for hands-on work – especially if you’re playing around with a new component or prototyping a simple build. If you’re like me, though, I’m always worried the schematic won’t transfer well to an actual PCB.
Let’s see if 10 MHz is actually the maximum a breadboard can handle.
We’ll use our FieldFox, which goes up to 28 GHz – so it’s safe to say we’re over-equipped for this measurement.
To connect it to the breadboard, we need cabling and fixtures. This fixture is a bit sketchy, but breadboard work is suspect anyways so it should be good enough. And now you have a super geeky pair of earrings.
I’ll then put the FieldFox into Network Analyzer mode and set it up for an S21 measurement.
For an S21 measurement, we’re going to output a frequency sweep at a known power into port 1, run the signal through the device, and see what we get at port 2.
It’s called an S21 measurement because it tells us what happens on port 2 as a result of what happens on port 1.
Before you can make any decent measurement with a network analyzer, you have to do a calibration. We’re going to do a quick and dirty cal, but VNA cal is a whole deep dive topic that we don’t have time for today.
So, here’s what it looks like before calibration, and here’s what it looks after we cal with a simple coax cable. When we add in our fixture we see that it looks different again. this is the effect of these fixtures on the measurement.
This highlights the importance of both calibration and using good fixtures and cabling. Because we only want to see the breadboard’s parameters, let’s run another cal.
Now it’s finally time to measure the breadboard – we’re going to start with just one row and nothing else connected.
Anyways, the general consensus is that solderless breadboards work ok for medium-speed, medium-impedance-level, and medium-precision circuits. We only looked at bandwidth today, but there are a ton of other factors that come into play here beyond just the bandwidth. For example, how’s the noise? How close can you actually get your bypass capacitors, what about EMI and crosstalk? How repeatable is it?
I also think just about anyone who’s ever used electronics has a horror story from using these things, I’d love to hear yours in the comments!
#Breadboard #BreadboardFrequency #BreadboardElectronics #BreadboardTutorial #RFEngineering #VNA #VectorNetworkAnalyzer #SParameters #ScatteringParamters #S21Measurement #RFElectronics #Wave #KeysightWave
#electronics #electricalengineering
Is the frequency limit of a solderless breadboard really 10 MHz? The VNA will tell us!
Sign up now for the Wave giveaway: bit.ly/YTWave2020
Click to subscribe! ► bit.ly/KLabs_sub ◄
Wave 2020 overview: bit.ly/Wave2020Blog
Helpful Links:
How fast of a signal can a breadboard handle? The answer is not super straightforward, but a simple S21 S-parameter test with the vector network analyzer will give us a lot of insights!
We test a single row, a single row with jumpers, two rows jumper wired together, and multiple rows chained together with a TON of jumpers.
Keysight Bench Facebook page:
facebook.com/keysightbench
Keysight RF Facebook page:
facebook.com/keysightrf
EEs Talk Tech Electrical Engineering podcast:
eestalktech.com
youtube.com/KeysightPodcasts
Check out our blog:
bit.ly/KeysTechBlogs
Twitter: @DanielBogdanoff:
twitter.com/DanielBogdanoff
Is this breadboard as good as garbage or can you actually do real prototyping with one? In a moment we’re going to break out the good ‘ol network analyzer and find out.
Conventional internet wisdom tells us that you shouldn’t use a breadboard for signals over 10 MHz. Is that true? Where did that frequency limit come from? I couldn’t find any answers I liked, so today we’re going to actually quantify the performance of a breadboard.
Breadboards get a bad rap, but they are fantastically helpful for hands-on work – especially if you’re playing around with a new component or prototyping a simple build. If you’re like me, though, I’m always worried the schematic won’t transfer well to an actual PCB.
Let’s see if 10 MHz is actually the maximum a breadboard can handle.
We’ll use our FieldFox, which goes up to 28 GHz – so it’s safe to say we’re over-equipped for this measurement.
To connect it to the breadboard, we need cabling and fixtures. This fixture is a bit sketchy, but breadboard work is suspect anyways so it should be good enough. And now you have a super geeky pair of earrings.
I’ll then put the FieldFox into Network Analyzer mode and set it up for an S21 measurement.
For an S21 measurement, we’re going to output a frequency sweep at a known power into port 1, run the signal through the device, and see what we get at port 2.
It’s called an S21 measurement because it tells us what happens on port 2 as a result of what happens on port 1.
Before you can make any decent measurement with a network analyzer, you have to do a calibration. We’re going to do a quick and dirty cal, but VNA cal is a whole deep dive topic that we don’t have time for today.
So, here’s what it looks like before calibration, and here’s what it looks after we cal with a simple coax cable. When we add in our fixture we see that it looks different again. this is the effect of these fixtures on the measurement.
This highlights the importance of both calibration and using good fixtures and cabling. Because we only want to see the breadboard’s parameters, let’s run another cal.
Now it’s finally time to measure the breadboard – we’re going to start with just one row and nothing else connected.
Anyways, the general consensus is that solderless breadboards work ok for medium-speed, medium-impedance-level, and medium-precision circuits. We only looked at bandwidth today, but there are a ton of other factors that come into play here beyond just the bandwidth. For example, how’s the noise? How close can you actually get your bypass capacitors, what about EMI and crosstalk? How repeatable is it?
I also think just about anyone who’s ever used electronics has a horror story from using these things, I’d love to hear yours in the comments!
#Breadboard #BreadboardFrequency #BreadboardElectronics #BreadboardTutorial #RFEngineering #VNA #VectorNetworkAnalyzer #SParameters #ScatteringParamters #S21Measurement #RFElectronics #Wave #KeysightWave
#electronics #electricalengineering
