A powerful option within the tool kit of a test equipment designer, particularly in automatic test equipment (ATE) applications, modular instruments offers all the needed test functions without the added size and expense of benchtop instruments. However, modular digitizers are not as efficient as benchtop oscilloscopes, especially in terms of breadth of measurement functions and features. Thus, ATE designers are usually faced with a challenging situation when using modular digitizers. With the advent of modular oscilloscopes, ATE designers easily overcame these limitations.
Utilized in ATE systems, both modular oscilloscopes and modular digitizers convert analog input signals into digital signals for processing and analysis. Aside from featuring similar basic specifications such as sample rate, vertical resolution, memory capacity and analog bandwidth, both modular oscilloscopes and modular digitizers also have similar power consumption, size and cost. Although both need to transfer data to the controller or the system PC for further processing, modular oscilloscopes offer better on-board processing than modular digitizers. Modular oscilloscopes can also provide information relating to waveform characteristics quickly and with less data transfer.
Modular oscilloscopes provide significant advantages over modular digitizers, as they offer ATE designers all the functionality, flexibility and rich set of measurement features of benchtop oscilloscope. Using minimal amount of processing power and external resources, these features effectively speeds up and simplifies the ATE design task while ensuring that the ATE conforms to all its design requirements.
Providing a vast array of features and functions, including those offered in benchtop oscilloscopes, modular oscilloscopes also have extended features and functions that are not offered in modular oscilloscopes, such as flexible analog signal conditioning, advanced triggering, onboard waveform measurement and analysis, advanced acquisition modes, an intuitive graphical user interface and flexible segmented memory.
Unlike digitizers, modular oscilloscopes offer numerous triggering options, including rising/falling edge, pulse width, event count, pattern, video, glitch and multi-event cascading triggers. These triggers help users easily capture elusive events missed by digitizers.
Modular oscilloscopes offer various flexible input signal conditioning ranges that are similar to those on benchtop oscilloscopes. They are also designed with advanced signal acquisition modes, including envelop detection, averaging, peak detect, equivalent time and high resolution. These acquisition modes deliver more waveform acquisition flexibility than those offered by modular digitizers.
With on-board waveform math and waveform analysis, modular oscilloscopes deliver faster waveform analysis and math while eliminating the need to transfer huge amount of waveform data to an external controller or PC. Math and analysis function may include subtract, add, FFT, multiply, integral, derivative, limit testing, histogram, waveform parameter trending and mask testing.
Unlike modular digitizers, which may need additional programming to establish a quality graphical user interface (GUI), modular oscilloscopes are integrated with a software that creates an intuitive GUI, providing manual instrument control and a user experience comparable to that of a benchtop oscilloscope.
Finally, modular oscilloscopes offer a remarkable amount of flexible segmented on-board memory, which allows users to view memory segments individually or overlaid, providing valuable insight into the behavior of the waveforms. This capability is not offered in modular digitizers.
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