Tektronix (www.tek.com) has introduced a four channel oscilloscope with a built-in spectrum analyzer, allowing users to capture time-correlated digital, analog and RF signals.

The MDO4054-3 offers 500 MHz bandwidth, a maximum real-time sampling rate of 2.5 GS/s and a record length of 20 M. Featuring a frequency range of 50 kHz to three GHz, the oscilloscope also comes with 16 digital channels and one RF channel.

The MDO4054-3 oscilloscope allows users to view both the frequency and time domain in a single glance. Users can likewise view the RF spectrum to observe its changes over time.

This mixed domain oscilloscope does not only enable users to observe the frequency domain, it also allows users to correlate events from the frequency domain with the phenomena at the time domain.

The MDO4054-3 offers a triggered acquisition system that has been fully integrated with the analog, RF and digital channels. This implies that a trigger event coordinates acquisitions from all channels, enabling users to capture a spectrum at the exact time an interesting time domain event occurred.

The oscilloscope features an extensive set of time domain triggers, including Sequence, Edge, Timeout, Pulse Width, Logic, Runt, Rise/Fall Time, Setup/Hold Violation, Video, as well as various parallel and serial bus packet triggers.

Its optional MDO4TRIG application module comes with advanced RF triggering. The module allows the RF input power level to be utilized as a source for Pulse Width, Sequence, Runt, Timeout and Logic trigger types.

It also offers a spectrogram display which is suitable for monitoring slow changing RF phenomena. Just like a common spectrum display, the x-axis represents frequency. However, the y-axis indicates time, while color is used to represent amplitude.