Tektronix Adds Mobile Protocol Decode for Oscilloscopes
March 9, 2014. Tektronix Inc. has announced protocol decode solutions for a number of interfaces adopted by mobile industry including USB 3.0 SuperSpeed Inter-Chip (SSIC) and RF Front-End (RFFE) Control interface along with an electrical testing and decode solution for the High Speed Synchronous Interface (HSI). Many of these interface use PHYs which are conformant with MIPI Alliance specifications.
“With these latest additions, Tektronix continues to expand on the industry’s most complete portfolio of protocol decode and verification tools based on oscilloscopes for the full range of MIPI protocols and standards,” said Brian Reich, general manager, Performance Oscilloscopes, Tektronix. “Our decoding solution will help designers efficiently and cost-effectively perform protocol validation in conjunction with electrical validation for MIPI specifications using a single oscilloscope.”
USB 3.0 SSIC decode for oscilloscopes
When used with high-performance Tektronix oscilloscopes, the new USB 3.0 SSIC solution gives firmware and software design teams the ability to efficiently debug, decode and analyze SSIC protocols across multiple USB lanes at the protocol layer, link layers and raw data/8b-10 encoded packets.
The SSIC specification provides a low-power USB 3.0 interconnect for mobile applications using the MIPI Alliance’s M-PHY as the physical layer. SSIC enables products that use as little as 20 percent of the power consumed by a USB 3.0 PHY while maintaining compatibility with USB 3.0 intellectual property and software.
The Tektronix SSIC decode solution provides the ability to use oscilloscope hardware triggers on live waveforms to improve the accuracy of locking onto packet types of interest , search on different packet types, and correlate with M-PHY electrical signals. Oscilloscope-based hardware triggering provides much higher accuracy than software triggers for capturing decoded signals.
Designers can debug and validate the protocol for 1, 2, or 4 lanes of SSIC for HS Gear 1, 2, or 3 speeds and PWM G1. The SSIC solution is designed for use with Tektronix MSO70000 Series mixed-signal oscilloscopes that feature bandwidths up to 33 GHz and high waveform capture ability.
RFFE, HSI solutions
The new solution for HSI allows design and test engineers to automatically make accurate and reliable HSI electrical measurements and decode protocols for compliance testing and troubleshooting. HSI is used to connect an application die to a cellular modem die in cellular handsets and provides a multiprocessor low-latency communication channel over a die-to-die link.
RFFE offers a common method for controlling RF front-end devices such as power amplifiers, low-noise amplifiers, filters, switches, power management modules, antenna tuners, and sensors. The Tektronix decode solution enables design teams to efficiently debug, decode and analyze RFFE protocols.
Tektronix also offers decoding solutions for Unipro and UFS with support for multi-lane decoding across the memory interface of M-PHY devices.
Both the HSI and RFFE decoders are available on Tektronix DPO5000, DPO7000, and DPO/DSA/MSO70000 oscilloscopes. The solutions were developed in conjunction with partner Prodigy Technovations.
D-PHY protocol decoder
Adding to its mobile segment Protocol Decode solution portfolio, Tektronix with solution partner The Moving Pixel Co. also released a standalone protocol decoder unit for D-PHY protocols. This unit supports CSI/DSI protocol decoding of MIPI D-PHY signals up to 1.5 Gb/s per lane with support for up to four lanes plus clock. Key capabilities include connections to the DUT via active solder-down probes, extensive real-time triggering, filtering and error detection.
The Tektronix SSIC, HIS, and RFFE decode solution and the standalone D-PHY decoder are available now. Pricing is $3,000 for the SSIC, HIS, and RFFE solution. The D-PHY decoder starts at $34,000.