Oscilloscope enhancements deliver easier debugging, improved signal fidelity

Gina Roos

eeProductCenter (10/08/2007 4:17 PM ET)

Beaverton, Ore. — Tektronix, Inc. has announced several new features and enhancements for its DPO7000 series and the DPO and DSA70000 series oscilloscopes. The new capabilities are said to provide unimpaired signal representation, as well as accurate timing and amplitude measurements. The enhancements will also ease testing of high-speed serial data buses such as PCI-Express, SATA, and HDMI. Applications include the development and testing of complex computing, video, communication, and data acquisition equipment.

Key additions include bandwidth limit selection to control the noise floor, bandwidth enhancement to the probe tip using DSP, pattern lock triggering at data rates up to 6.25 Gbits/s NRZ, and event search and mark. The DPO7000 and DPO/DSA70000 series oscilloscopes include as standard a series of user-selectable bandwidth limit filters that preserve the basic roll-off characteristics, flatness, and phase linearity of the instrument within the new frequency range, reducing the effects of out-of-band noise on the measurements, said Tektronix.

DSP filtering has been added and complements the acquisition engine providing reliable timing and amplitude resolution and accuracy down to the probe tip for most Z-active probes (P7380, P7380SMA, P7313, P7313SMA, and P7360) and new P7500 TriMode probes. This feature is available at sample rates above the maximum real-time sample rate and is selectable independently on all 4 channels.

Pattern lock offers pattern triggering at data rates up to 6.25 Gbits/s NRZ or 8b/10b with internal clock recovery by enabling the oscilloscope to take samples at specific locations in the data pattern. This industry-unique feature captures an entire NRZ test pattern for in-depth analysis. Pattern lock triggering may be used to build up an eye diagram from samples taken sequentially through the data pattern.

The event search and mark capability enables an engineer to search through a long acquisition and automatically mark all occurrences of a specified event. The user can even view the search results as an event table rather than viewing them one at a time on the waveforms themselves, providing rapid debugging of faults in complex signal structures, said Tektronix.

Additional features include waveform limit testing, enhanced triggering mode with trigger path compensation, horizontal timebase control, XYZ mode, and enhanced FastAcq. These and other features are available as part of Firmware Version 4.0.

Product information: DPO7000 series

Tektronix, Inc., www.tektronix.com