Any suggestions for programmable attenuators?

In order to automate testing of throughput v/s distance, I am hoping to acquire a programmable attenuator that can be scripted and supports at least 3 connectors (for 3x3 NICs).

If anyone has any recommendations please let me know.

Thanks,
ben

Ben Greear <[email protected]>
Candela Technologies Inc  http://www.candelatech.com

We have a few units from eubus (http://www.eubus.net, ATS0760-95). They're fairly easy to interface to (we're controlling them with a BeagleBone, but need level shifting because they are 5V devices). We don't have a whole lot of seat time with them so far, but we've validated that they work.

--
Paul

I've managed to wire up some of these as well (using Arduino as controller).

One thing I notice is that the smallest signal quality I can see reported by the NIC (ath9k) is about -81 or -82 dBm.

Technically, the attenuator should be able to go below the noise floor of around -90dbm if I understand things properly.

Have you done any testing of this nature?

And for what it's worth, using ath9k, 1x1 MIMO (one channel) /n, ht40 on 5ghz, I get almost 8Mbps UDP download at -80 dBm signal quality :)

Thanks,
Ben

Ben Greear <[email protected]>
Candela Technologies Inc  http://www.candelatech.com