Pico Technology Ltd. (www.picotech.com) has released its latest instrument engineered for time-domain transmissometry (TDT) and time-domain reflectometry (TDR). The PicoScope 9211A TDR/TDT sampling oscilloscope offers an affordable method of analyzing connectors, cables, IC packages and circuit boards.

Using two programmable, 100-HP rise time step generators, the scope stimulates the equipment under test. To build up an image from a sequence of transmitted or reflected pulses, the scope utilizes its 12 GHz sampling inputs. The scope’s results can be displayed as ohms, volts or reflection coefficient against distance or time.

Aside from its TDR/TDT analysis capability, the scope also provides mask limit testing for vast array of communications standards, including InfiniBand 2.5G and 5.0G, ITU G.703, XAUI, Ethernet, RapidIO 1.25G and 3.125G, ANSI T1/102, PCI Express 2.5G and 3.0G, G.984.2, and Serial ATA 1.5G and 3.0G.

The device also offers users the benefit of three trigger inputs – a 1 to 10 GHz pre-scaled trigger, a DC to 1 GHz direct trigger, and a 12.3 Mbps to 2.7 Gbps clock-recovery trigger. For averaging eye diagrams, the scope also provides a 10 Gbps software pattern sync trigger.

The PicoScope 9211A provides the convenience that bulky, traditional bench-top device cannot offer, as it consumes very little space of the user’s workbench. Working at the premises of the customer will never be a problem since the only extra device that the user needs to bring is a mains adapter and a laptop. The analyzer easily connects to any Windows Vista or XP computer with a USB 2.0 port. The scope is equipped with an Ethernet port that can be used during remote operation of the scope over a network.