When designing new products based on faster high-speed serial buses like PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0 and 3.0, SATA Gen 3, SAS, HDMI 1.3, and DisplayPort, a quality signal source is needed to create actual real-life signals with all their imperfections like distortion, noise, jitter, and glitches. The same is true for broadband RF applications designs like WiMedia Ultra-Wideband (UWB) and radar.
Tektronix’s AWG7000B and AWG5000B arbitrary waveform generators (AWGs) meet these needs with a 20% increase in performance over their previous models (see the figure). These units feature a 9.6-GHz RF output, 10-bit resolution, and sample rates up to 24 Gbytes/s, depending on the model. With such capability, it’s easy to create practical high-speed serial outputs from ideal to highly distorted.
The waveforms are created using the Tektronix SerialXpress software, which performs direct synthesis of waveforms for high-speed serial data receiver testing of SATA, SAS, PCIe, and other serial interfaces. The waveform files go to the AWG7000B for the generation of the desired signal at rates to 8 Gbits/s.
For RF applications, the RFXpress software is used to generate and edit RF/IF/IQ signals for almost any wireless testing requirement. The new RDR option provides the ultimate flexibility in creating pulsed radar waveforms, including basic pulses, pulse trains, and pulse groups. It supports applications such as resolving range and Doppler ambiguity, frequency hopping for Electronic Counter Counter Measures (ECCM), and Pulse to Pulse Amplitude variation to simulate Swerling target models. The UWBCF/UWBCT option for RFXpress lets users generate WiMedia-UWB signals for conformance mode margin and stress testing. Using the RFXpress output files, the AWG7000B can generate the RF signals up to 9.6 GHz.
The AWG5000B and AWG7000B are available now. Prices start at $28,000 for the basic AWG5002B model and range up to $65,000 for the 6-Gsample/s AWG7061B model. RFXpress software starts at $5000.
Tektronix Inc.