When it comes to electronic design, test, and evaluation, our fast-moving technological landscape is both a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, there are more solutions to solve and address applications in the electronic space than ever before. On the other, the need to ensure that your test and evaluation solution is better than the system it is testing. Only if the lines on your ruler are closer together than the features you want to measure is true accuracy possible.
Luckily, the latest tools for test and evaluation are well up to the task. For example, the basic oscilloscope, staple of the bench, has grown and evolved over the decades from a relatively smart display that required physical measurement of the traces on the screen to a multifunction logic-driven development tool. Today’s oscilloscopes often integrate multiple toolsets and functionalities unthought of a few decades ago.
Among the many examples of the state of the industry in the evaluation tool space, Farnell partnered with Rohde & Schwarz to present their latest tech at Oscilloscope Days 2021. The event presented a series of free technical webinars covering the methodology, challenges and applications of using modern digital oscilloscopes for electronic design and test.
Streamed in three languages, English, German, and French, the Oscilloscope Days 2021 webinar series combined practical and theoretical learning principles to help electronics engineers overcome real-world application challenges and understand the methodology required for electronic design and test.
Session 1 covers the basics of how to choose a measurement setup. Participants will learn how to estimate the required bandwidth of their equipment and how to select the right instrument for specific applications. The operation of VNA, an oscilloscope, SPA and EMI receiver will also be covered.
The second webinar will focus on the analysis of power integrity and DC/DC converters. Some of the key topics covered in this session include the importance of power integrity, the impact of switching semiconductors on a DUT and how to test a DUT’s power conversion and distribution parts. Day 1 will conclude with a look at the requirements of using high differential probes and filtering for digital transmission systems.
In the following webinars, Rohde & Schwarz experts will dive deeper into how to achieve signal integrity and Bus analysis using oscilloscopes. Gain understanding of the influence a transmission line, filters and protection circuits can have on signal integrity while learning how to practically apply eye diagrams, protocol decode, and USB trigger and decode. Another session will cover how to debug EMC from a device, including what instruments and accessories can be used for EMC debugging and how to qualify EMC during the development cycle using an oscilloscope.
Visit https://www.rohde-schwarz.com/_229356-1048128.html to access the recordings from the event.
Here is some recent oscilloscope news from the evaluationengineering.com website:
DL950 ScopeCorder Empowers Design and Evaluation of Green and Energy-Efficient Technologies
Yokogawa Test & Measurement released the DL950 ScopeCorder to improve efficiency and effectiveness in design and evaluation of renewable and energy efficient technologies. The DL950 ScopeCorder is a combination of a multichannel, mixed-signal oscilloscope and portable data acquisition recorder. It captures both high-speed transient events and long-term trends. Building on the capabilities of the well-established DL850E, the new DL950 ScopeCorder can handle larger amounts of data at a faster sample rate and with a longer recording time. The DL950 is capable of simultaneous measurement of a wide variety of mechanical parameters.
Increasing complexities in electronic systems have resulted in the need to measure a wide range of input signals at fast sampling speeds over lengthy periods. Engineers must often resort to using multiple test instruments to measure several signals under different conditions. That adds complexities with data synchronization, management of multiple data formats and storage locations, and the inability to view all signals in one instrument.
https://evaluationengineering.com/21223795
Latest 6000E 4-Channel Mixed-Signal Oscilloscopes Perform Single-Shot Pulses at 200ps Resolution
Saelig introduced 750MHz and 1GHz models to the 4-channel PicoScope 6000E Series, which provide 8 to 12 bits of vertical resolution, and up to 5GSa/s sampling rate with 4GSa memory, allowing these scopes to display single-shot pulses with up to 200ps time resolution. The four new 4-channel models added to the existing 6000E series are the PicoScope 750MHz 6405E and the 1GHz 6406E with 8-bit A/D resolution and the PicoScope 750MHz 6425E and the 1GHz 6426E with 8, 10, or 12 bits “FlexRes” resolution. The screen update rate is 300,000 waveforms per second. An active probe interface on these scopes allows the use of optional matching 750MHz or 1.3GHz Active Probes.
Pico “FlexRes” flexible-resolution oscilloscopes allow the scope hardware to be configured to optimize either the sampling rate or the resolution: a fast (5GSa/s) 8-bit oscilloscope for looking at digital signals, a 10-bit oscilloscope for general-purpose use, or a high-resolution 12-bit oscilloscope for audio work and other sensitive analog applications. All models can operate with an extra 4 bits of resolution with the enhanced vertical resolution software feature. Additionally, these oscilloscopes offer 8 or 16 optional digital channels when using the plug-in TA369 MSO pods.
https://evaluationengineering.com/21223578
DL950 ScopeCorder Empowers Design and Evaluation of Green and Energy-Efficient Technologies
Increasing complexities in electronic systems have resulted in the need to measure a wide range of input signals at fast sampling speeds over lengthy periods. Engineers must often resort to using multiple test instruments to measure several signals under different conditions. That adds complexities with data synchronization, management of multiple data formats and storage locations, and the inability to view all signals in one instrument.
Yokogawa Test & Measurement released the DL950 ScopeCorder, a combination of a multichannel, mixed-signal oscilloscope and portable data acquisition recorder. It captures both high-speed transient events and long-term trends. Building on the capabilities of the well-established DL850E, the new DL950 ScopeCorder can handle larger amounts of data at a faster sample rate and with a longer recording time. The DL950 is capable of simultaneous measurement of a wide variety of mechanical parameters. https://evaluationengineering.com/21223795
Rackmount Oscilloscope Targets Demanding Applications
RIGOL Technologies expanded its UltraVision II technology platform with the DS8000-R Rack-Mount Digital Oscilloscope, which provides up to 2 GHz of bandwidth. This version has a typical trigger jitter between instruments of less than 350 psRMS, and accessories to synchronize triggering and minimize timing offset among channels. The device delivers the same jitter and real-time eye analysis, power analysis, and serial decode as the company’s MSO8000 Series oscilloscope,
Targeting demanding system and automation applications, the scope’s compact design (1U high by ½ rack wide) enables two DS8000-R oscilloscopes to be mounted in the same standard 1U rack space. Providing eight 2 GHz channels in 1U of rack space, the DS8000-R addresses high-speed signal acquisition in a compact footprint. The scope can be controlled locally via HDMI monitor, mouse and keyboard, as well as remotely via local web control, freely available UltraScope PC software, or custom programming using LAN or USB.
https://evaluationengineering.com/21223794
Mixed-Signal Oscilloscopes Combine Eight Instruments in One
With its Infiniium MXR-Series mixed-signal oscilloscope, Keysight Technologies offers what is said to be the first oscilloscope with 8 analog channels at 6 GHz and 16 simultaneous digital channels. Thanks to advanced ASIC-driven processing, the MXR-Series scopes embody a highly versatile instrument, encompassing the functionalities of a real-time spectrum analyzer, oscilloscope, digital voltmeter, waveform generator, Bode plotter, counter, protocol analyzer, and logic analyzer. The result is less testbench complexity and a smoother workflow.
Applications such as high-speed digital designs, power-integrity verification, Wi-Fi 6, IoT, IIoT, and gallium-nitride (GaN) semiconductors operate at frequencies between 2 GHz and 6 GHz. Testing such products requires time- and frequency-domain equipment capable of simultaneous analog and digital channels. This is coupled with software-enabled protocols, standards, built-in test assistance, and test team remote collaboration. The MXR-Series scope serves test applications with an extensive suite of software solutions focused on power integrity, high-speed digital test, and verification. In addition, built-in software functionality includes a fault hunter function to speed root cause identification and resolution of rare or randomly occurring errors.
