RF Signal Analyzer Is Not Detected From NI-RFSA Soft Front Panel

Updated Jun 15, 2023

Reported In

Hardware

  • PXIe-5665

Issue Details

When I open the NI-RFSA Soft Front Panel application, I receive the following message:

No NI RF Signal Analyzers were detected. Open Measurement and Automation Explorer (MAX), verify your device is properly installed, and then click Rescan. Otherwise, click Exit.

However, when I open NI-MAX, I can see my device is detected properly.

Solution

The NI-RFSA Soft Front Panel supports spectrum analyzer measurements, such as adjacent channel power, occupied bandwidth, third-order intercept (TOI), complementary cumulative distribution functions (CCDF), spectral emission mask, and transmit power. Similar to stand-alone RF signal analyzers, the NI-RFSA Soft Front Panel controls the RF device and analyzes and presents data. However, because the SFP operates on the PC, it provides additional processing, storage, and display capabilities. You can open multiple instances of the Soft Front Panel to interact with more than one device. Each instance of the SFP opens as a separate application window.

Nevertheless, the NI-RFSA Soft Front Panel only scans for local devices. Therefore, if you are using remote hardware with your system, the Soft Front Panel won't detect it and will throw the message. To correct this, make sure to run the Soft Front Panel from the embedded controller, or from the development machine in case you use an MXI connection.