High-speed signals require high-speed test solutions, and the DPO, DSA, and MSO70000C series of oscilloscopes from Tektronix have been turbocharged for operation at sampling rates to 100 GSamples/s. This means lower noise and more information on five-times oversampling of 20-GHz signals. These wide-bandwidth oscilloscopes have been upgraded with a number of improvements, including higher accuracy for signal integrity (SI) measurements and a more stable time base for improved radar signal measurements.
The 100-GSamples/s sampling rates in these "C" models represents a twofold improvement over the earlier "B" series Digital Phosphor Oscilloscopes (DPO), Digital Sampling Oscilloscopes (DSA), and Mixed-Signal Oscilloscopes (MSO) oscilloscopes (see figure). The instruments provide four measurement channels with as much as 20-GHz bandwidth on all four channels. Different versions are available with bandwidths of 4, 6, 8, 12.5, and 20 GHz per channel. The higher sample rates lead to lower phase noise and more accurate phaseresponse measurements, critical for electronic-warfare (EW) systems.
The C series instruments also include a faster compute platform than the B models. This new platform offers faster processing for longer data records such as jitter, noise, and bit-error-rate (BER) measurements and for performing statistical analysis. Boot and application start up times are also significantly quicker in the C versions compared to the B versions.
While the DPO and DSO series provide traditional oscilloscope measurements, the MSO70000C series instruments have been designed for mixed-signal measurements, and provide four analog measurement channels and 16 logic channels with 80-ps timing resolution for debugging high-speed digital and analog signals. They are ideal for tracking fast digital signals found in many modern electronic devices, such as DDR memory, applicationspecific integrated circuits (ASICs), field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), systemon- a-chip (SoC) devices, and digital RF circuits. In addition, the DPO/DSA/MSO70000C series oscilloscopes provide the bandwidth and sampling rates needed to debug serial data signals up to 12 Gb/s on all channels simultaneously. The FastAcq acquisition mode provides a capture rate greater than 300,000 waveforms/s for insight into complex signal behavior.
As a complement to the oscilloscopes, Tektronix offers a broad range of software packages for high-speed serial data design, debug, and compliance verification. This includes DPOJET for jitter and timing analysis, SDLA for testing transmitter, interconnects and receivers, and standard-specific packages for DDR, DisplayPort, PCI Express, USB, HDMI, SATA, Ethernet, and Fibre Channel testing. In addition, information on a wide range of probes and probe accessories can be found on the firm's web site. The DPO/ DSA/MSO70000C series scopes with 100-GSamples/s speed are available now globally. Pricing starts at $110,000 (USD) for a 12.5-GHz model. Tektronix, Inc., 14200 SW Karl Braun Dr., P.O. Box 500, Beaverton, OR 97077; (800) 835-9433, www.tektronix.com.