Oscilloscope Module Characterizes 10-Gb/s to 32-Gb/s Designs

Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) introduced a precision waveform analyzer for design verification and validation of high-speed electrical communications systems and components.

The 86108B precision waveform analyzer has residual jitter below 50 femtoseconds, channel bandwidths to 50 GHz, and integrated clock recovery to 32 Gb/s. This new plug-in module is the latest addition to the Agilent 86100C/D DCA wide-bandwidth oscilloscope family.

This device is well-suited for testing IEEE 802.3ba (40-Gb/100-Gb Ethernet), Optical Internetworking Forum CEI 3.0, INCITS T-11 32G Fibre Channel and high-speed proprietary systems. The 86108B’s integrated precision timebase and clock recovery design, with typical residual jitter below 50 fs rms, enables it to minimize potential measurement problems.

Continuous data-rate coverage from 50 Mb/s to 32 Gb/s, peaking control and adjustable loop bandwidths to 20 MHz also allow the clock recovery circuit to provide a phase-locked-loop response for accurate device characterization.

The integrated instrumentation-grade clock recovery circuit allows the module to trigger directly from single-ended or differential data signals eliminating a separate trigger input. The module also integrates high-bandwidth pickoffs and phase-matched cables, which reduces setup complexity and maintains signal integrity.

An auxiliary clock-recovery input circuit lets you analyze extremely low-level signals, or signals that have been closed due to severe inter-symbol interference, by triggering the scope using a separate synchronous data (or clock) signal connected to the 86108B’s auxiliary CR input. The on-board phase detector enables a flexible and accurate technique to determine PLL bandwidth/peaking on devices with either clock or data inputs and outputs.

The cost of the system (an 86100D mainframe plus the 86108B module) is below comparable real-time or equivalent-time oscilloscope units. It is available with bandwidth options of 35 GHz and 50 GHz and clock recovery data-rate options of 16 Gb/s and 32 Gb/s. Both bandwidth and clock recovery options are upgradeable, so users can enhance their instruments as their designs warrant.

Agilent’s high-speed digital solutions offer a range of essential tools to help engineers design and simulate, analyze, debug and ensure compliant designs while cutting through the challenges of gigabit digital designs.

Agilent Technologies
www.agilent.com

 

 

 

Agilent add-ins extend compliance capabilities of Infiniium oscilloscopes

Agilent Technologies Inc. (www.agilent.com) has released a product enhancement that extends the capabilities of compliance applications in the firm’s Infiniium oscilloscopes.

The enhancement to the firm’s N5467A user-defined application software allows engineers to develop extensions, which they can plug into current compliance applications for PCIe(R), USB, SATA, DDR, MIPI, HDMI, Ethernet and other technologies. With the add-in capability, engineers can quickly automate custom measurements on the Infiniium oscilloscopes, effectively saving time and effort.

The add-ins may be designed as external instruments for probe switches, pattern generators, temperature chambers and other devices; pre- and post-processing scripts such as LabVIEW, MATLAB, C++, Python and Visual Basic; complete custom test with connection prompts and configuration variables; and device-under-test controllers to alter test modes, transmit specific test patterns and others.

“Engineers have been asking for the ability to extend the capability of our huge list of compliance applications,” remarked Jay Alexander, Vice President and General Manager of Agilent’s Oscilloscope Products Division.

“We are excited to give our customers the flexibility to automate custom measurements and measurements with external instruments so they can test more efficiently.”

The add-ins allows engineers to take advantage of the lowest noise floor as well as the flattest response of Infiniium 90000 and 90000 X-Series oscilloscopes. Agilent’s add-in development environment can be used by engineers to develop the standalone applications and add-ins they need. When installed into a compliance application, the add-in can be fully run with the application.

Agilent DSO90604A Infiniium Oscilloscope delivers unmatched accuracy

Agilent Technologies (www.agilent.com) offers unmatched real-time accuracy with the release of the DSO90604A Infiniium High Performance Oscilloscope, which offers six GHz bandwidth, a real-time sampling rate of up to 20 GSa/s and up to one Gpts memory.

This four channel oscilloscope allows users to use jitter budget on the design and not on the oscilloscope, quickly meet today’s demanding compliance tests and debug even the most demanding compliance tests with confidence.

Offering the industry’s lowest noise floor, the DSO90604A delivers the most accurate real-time jitter measurements. It provides the best oscilloscope solution as it comes equipped with full-bandwidth probing solutions as well as hardware-accelerated equalization and de-embedding techniques.

The oscilloscope’s deep memory of one Gbyte enables it to resolve low-frequency jitter components quickly in just a single measurement, while its statistical accuracy is optimised with more data collection. Its deep memory allows more comprehensive testing while remaining responsive to support pattern lengths up to PRBS23 for accurate receiver and transmitter results.

The oscilloscope offers various applications that help users decode and trigger serial busses, view FFT based spectrum analysis of the signal or iron out the kinks in their memory design. It offers unique serial protocol views and DDR debug tools that support multiple generations of the standard.

Meanwhile, FFT enables users to easily and quickly analyze the signal’s frequency components. The oscilloscope can display and combine both the FFT magnitude and Phase with other Matlab based measurements or math functions.

Standard windowing of Flattop, Rectangular and Hanning are supported together with cursor based power measurements. Users can use the Agilent 89601A Vector Signal Analyzer software when more power frequency domain measurements are needed.

Agilent’s InfiniiVision Oscilloscopes bags EDN China Innovation Award

For the third time, Agilent (www.agilent.com) has won the EDN China Innovation Award, with the InfiniiVision 2000 and 3000 X-Series oscilloscopes recognized as the best product in the test and measurement category. Last 2010, Agilent’s Infiniium 90000 X-Series oscilloscope has also been conferred with the Best Test and Measurement Product award.

Based on the original EDN Innovation Awards, the EDN China Innovation Awards areChina’s landmark awards in the microelectronics field. Out of the 142 products submitted by 80 different companies, Agilent’s 2000 and 3000 X-Series were unanimously chosen by a jury of experts from the media, industry and academic research. The 2000 and 3000 X-Series triumphed over strong competition from Tektronix, Lecroy, Rohde & Schwarz and National Instruments.

“We have consistently ensured that our customers around the world are served with the very best test and measurement products, and we sincerely thank our esteemed customers, as well as EDN China, for this prestigious award,” said Jay Alexander, Vice President and General Manager of Agilent’s Oscilloscope Products Division.

“This level of acknowledgement reinforces the technology leadership and unprecedented measurement contributions the new oscilloscopes bring to customers. We are honored by this innovation award and will continue on our path to develop additional industry-leading products.”

Configured and priced for the education lab environment, Agilent’s InfiniiVision 2000 and 3000 X-Series oscilloscopes allows engineering students to view more signals as they offer the fastest waveform update rate in the industry.

These upgradable oscilloscopes offers more investment protection while providing the power of four instruments – logic analyzer, oscilloscope, protocol analyzer and function generator – in one package.

Infiniium 9000 and 90000 Series oscilloscopes with new compliance test application

Agilent Technologies Inc. (www.agilent.com) has announced that it has equipped the Agilent Infiniium 9000 and 90000 Series oscilloscopes with a secure digital ultra-high-speed card-compliance test software, the Agilent N6461A SD UHS-II card compliance test application.

The first in the industry, the SD UHS-II bus interface technology raises secure digital performance with up to 1.56 Gb/sec data rate in consumer electronics applications. The new compliance test package also helps designers accelerate the SD UHS-II card-based systems’ development while ensuring their interoperability.

It also offers SD UHS-II card physical-layer compliance measurements that comply with SD Association 4.0 SD card specification. For each test, the software configures the oscilloscope automatically and generates a HTML report after the test.

“Agilent has been working with SD UHS-II technology leaders to help define the test methodology for testing the new UHS-II memory cards,” said Jay Alexander, Vice President of Oscilloscopes Business at Agilent.

“Agilent’s expertise in physical layer testing helps our customers achieve conformance on their SD UHS-II products using our compliance tools with the oscilloscope and J-BERT.”

“Agilent’s compliance test suite provides a solid test environment for checking UHS-II system health quickly and easily,” said Miki Takahashi, analog design manager at O2Micro, a supplier of SD host devices. “Test results help designers create a robust system with reasonable operating margin and excellent signal integrity.”

New 89600 VSA software compatible with Agilent oscilloscopes

Agilent Technologies Inc. (www.agilent.com) has unveiled the latest, innovative multi-measurement capability to its 89600 VSA software. Compatible with the company’s oscilloscopes, this advanced software allows simultaneous signal analysis of numerous carriers and signal formats for deeper signal insight and more efficient testing in wireless test.

A premier vector signal analysis solution for R&D, Agilent’s 89600 VSA software offers standards-based and advanced general purpose tools for evaluating signal spectrum, time and modulation characteristics.

The multi-measurement capability of the 89600 VSA software has been specifically designed to provide the power of multiple signal analyzers featuring the convenience of an optimized, single user interface. The advanced architecture of the software allows engineers to simultaneously configure multiple measurements. And since all measurements are stored in the memory, they can be easily called on for coordinated and immediate execution.

Moreover, the new software also enables engineers to sequentially perform measurements when the signals are too far apart to be captured in one acquisition. The results are then displayed on one screen, allowing engineers to do in-depth comparison using user-defined equations and trace overlays.

“The success of our wireless customers depends heavily on their ability to keep pace with rapidly evolving technologies and standards,” remarked Guy Sene, Vice President and General Manager of Agilent’s Microwave and Communications Division.

“By adding multi-measurement capability to our 89600 VSA software, which supports a wide variety of Agilent instruments, we will be providing the industry’s most flexible multi-measurement solution—a solution that enables engineers to see through the complexity in their wireless designs.”

The new software also runs in PC-based instruments or on Microsoft Windows-based PCs.

Agilent U2701A USB Modular Oscilloscope

Agilent (www.agilent.com) has released an eight bit dual channel 100 MHz oscilloscope that utilizes the common proprietary standard high-speed USB 2.0 interface to offer ease of use connectivity, the U2701A USB modular oscilloscope.

Offering a maximum memory depth of 32 Mpts and up to 1 GSa/s sampling rate, the oscilloscope allows users to easily set up and configure their test with the oscilloscope’s plug and play feature.

Through the PC screen’s individual windows, the integrated Agilent Measurement Manager (AMM) software offers the modular device a familiar front-panel interface. The software helps users quickly perform measurement acquisitions and configuration as well as analyze measured data.

The oscilloscope can be utilized either as a standalone module or as a modular device, offering compact solution and expansion capabilities when coupled with other modules within the company’s USB Modular Instruments and DAQ family.

The U2701A features IVI-COM drivers, effectively making it compatible with known development environment such as Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, Agilent VEE, C/C++ and Visual Basic 6, LabVIEW and Microsoft .NET Framework. The oscilloscope’s compact package makes it suitable for standalone bench use and integration into system solutions that feature U2781A chassis. Since it provides Hi-Speed USB 2.0 compatibility, the oscilloscope can be easily connected to a PC.

Users can easily log captured configuration commands, and review them using the Command Logger packed in the AMM software. Its Code Converter helps users convert the Command logger files into snippets of VB, VEE, C# and C++ codes.

Infiniium oscilloscope series features Ethernet 64b/66b protocol decoding and triggering

Agilent Technologies Inc. (www.agilent.com) has expanded the application portfolio of the Infiniium oscilloscope series with the addition of Ethernet 64b/66b protocol decoding and triggering software, making it the first family of oscilloscope to support 64b/66b protocol decoding and triggering.

To date, the only oscilloscope-based protocol solutions available in the market were for buses, such as CAN, SPI, I2C or 8b/10b-based decoding schemes. This leaves 64b/66b developers manually decoding complex designs. Decoding in real time, the Agilent N8815A Ethernet 10Gbase-KR allow teams to develop higher-quality products more easily and quickly.

Ethernet 64b/66b is primarily used in today’s transmission and networking technologies. Ethernet, Fiber Channel and InfiniBand are some of the technologies that benefit from the lower overhead of the 64b/66b. Specifically developed to benefit designers of the 40Gbase-KR and 10Gbase-KR technology, Agilent’s N8815A software takes advantage of Infiniium’s multiple serial searching and decoding, enabling designers to view four planes at once.

The N8815A software does not only decode 64b/66b signals, they also properly identify PRBS signals including their lengths. The application allows designers to ascertain the exact pattern and pattern length of the signals they are running. It also features a forward error correction function.

Supporting the new N8815A Ethernet 10Gbase-KR decode application, Agilent’s Infiniium 90000 X-Series oscilloscope includes the industry’s fastest real-time oscilloscopes with 33 GHz real-time bandwidth. Together with Infiniium 90000 Series, these oscilloscopes offer the industry’s lowest jitter measurement floor and the lowest noise, ensuring outstanding measurement accuracy.

Agilent’s DSO91208A Infiniium low-profile oscilloscope

Agilent Technologies (www.agilent.com) has proudly introduced a low-profile oscilloscope specifically engineered to allow research at the cutting edge of physics – the DSO91208A Infiniium Oscilloscope. Offering bandwidth of up to 12 GHz with 50 Ω front end, this high-performance oscilloscope also comes with eight 40 GSa/s digitizer channels and standard acquisition memory of 20 Mpts.

The DSO91208A oscilloscope is fitted in 7UI high 19 inch rack and based on Infiniium DSO90000A series oscilloscopes. It has been designed to meet even the most demanding requirements by offering the features needed to ensure unrivalled real-time accuracy, fast and reliable measurements, powerful internal capabilities with off-the-shelf software and on-board PCs, as well as fast offload compatibility and speeds with industry standard computation packages.

Aside from custom programmable filter response, the oscilloscope also features the lowest noise floor at 2.8mV at 100mV/div and hardware accelerated de-embedding to allow fast compensation for fixture, probe and channel effects.

The oscilloscope’s eight channel module offers two PCs that deliver standard I/O functionality, while running application software. Its custom Infiniium Data Accelerator (IDA) hardware on the acquisition boards facilitates measurements by requiring math and filtering algorithms. Equipped with various measurement and analysis features, the oscilloscope can be outfitted with various unique software options.

The DSO91208A comes with InfiniiScan event identification function that helps users identify signal integrity issues by rapidly triggering on complex events. Its Serial Data Equalization function allows users to measure at the pin as well as utilize equalization to view a virtual eye on the equalizer’s other side. Model equalization techniques offered include FFE, DFE and CTLE.

Allion Test Labs chooses Agilent’s test solutions: Infiniium 90000A Series oscilloscopes

Agilent Technologies Inc. (www.agilent.com) recently announced that China-based Allion Test Labs (www.allion.com) has selected Agilent’s test solutions for DisplayPort and USB 3.0 compliance and certification testing.

Agilent also said that Allion Test Labs in Taiwan upgraded its Agilent test solution from HDMI 1.3 to HDMI 1.4. It also added the new symbol of J-BERT N4903B, as well as the frame error ratio measurement option to the USB 3.0 test solution.

The announcements show the continuing long-term relationship between Allion Test Labs and Agilent, as well as the ability of Agilent to provide leading-edge measurement and test solutions for USB, HDMI, DisplayPort and SATA standards compliance and certification testing.

“We choose Agilent as a strategic partner for emerging high-speed applications that cover USB 3.0, HDMI 1.4, DisplayPort 2.0, SAS/SATA 12 Gbps and TransferJet, because Agilent is recognized for its technical expertise in standards bodies and compliance programs,” said James Ou, Engineering Service Division director at Allion Test Labs (Taiwan). “We understand the importance of having the most accurate and hardware upgradeable test equipment available. We selected Agilent test equipment for our facilities because of its powerful functions in test automation, ease of use and scope bandwidth upgradeable to 32 GHz, and J-BERT supporting up to 14.2 Gbps data rates.”

As high-speed digital interfaces increase in various electronic devices, designers and test houses need the appropriate tools to ensure that their electronic designs meet newest industry standards. Allion’s testing labs will utilize the N5990A test automation software platform; 81134A pulse/pattern generator; J-Bert N4903B high-performance serial BERT; and the Infiniium 90000A Series oscilloscopes.

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