Take Your Measurements and Analysis to the Next Level with New Features

Infiniium Oscilloscopes 5.60 Software Release

The latest Keysight Infiniium oscilloscope software release, version 5.60, offers new capabilities and enhancements that make measuring and analyzing your designs easier and more comprehensive than ever before.  With additions like a new crosstalk app, bit error rate measurements for PAM-4 signals, enhancements to MultiScope, and eye contour software, you will get even more insight to your designs.  Check out what’s new with the Infiniium 5.60 release:

Crosstalk Analysis Application (N8833A/B)

Figure 1 – Keysight Crosstalk Analysis

The Keysight Crosstalk analysis application is the industry’s first and only application to measure and analyze crosstalk.  It allows you to probe up to four signals on your board at once – this means one victim (the signal of interest) and three aggressors (signals that could be causing crosstalk on the victim).  The application can be used to analyze both NEXT (near end crosstalk) and FEXT (far end crosstalk).  With the crosstalk app, you can measure the amount of crosstalk appearing on the victim and even remove the crosstalk from measurement.  This can help you decide whether or not it is worth redesigning your board to remove the crosstalk.

New Bit Error Rate (BER) Measurements for the PAM-4 Measurement Application (N8836A)

Figure 2 – Cumulative BER measurement setup

The addition of BER measurements to the PAM-4 measurement application software can help you quickly identify and analyze design flaws in your digital systems.   With this functionality you can measure the BER across multiple acquisitions, similar to the standard statistical BER measurement you would get from a BERT.  This is helpful for determining if your design passes a required specification.

Figure 3 – Per Acquisition BER measurement setup

In addition to this cumulative BER measurement, the oscilloscope can also measure BER per acquisition. In this mode you can look at how many errors happen in a single acquisition.  If you also have InfiniiScan and EZJIT on your oscilloscope, you can even graphically display where the errors are happening in the signal. This is helpful for understanding the errors at a more detailed level than a cumulative measurement.

For example, let’s say the cumulative measurement indicates the BER is 10e^-5 and that passes your design specification. But when looking at the per acquisition measurement, you find that all the errors are happening in quick succession. This could be bad news.  With four different levels in a limited amplitude range, it is likely that a bit may be lost here and there, and forward error correction (FEC) algorithms can correct standalone, faulty bits.  But when you see several errors all together – what we call burst errors – your FEC may no longer be able to handle this.  So the design has passed the general specification, but is still faulty.  Without this type of analysis tool, it would be much harder to debug such a situation.

Keysight N8834A MultiScope Enhancements

Figure 4 – MultiScope

The MultiScope application gives you visibility of up to 40 channels simultaneously.  You can connect 2, 5, or 10 scopes together.  This is especially helpful for power system designers, or anyone with a need to look at more than four analog channels at once.

Using MultiScope with the Infiniium 5.60 update, you can see all of your signals on and work directly from the leader oscilloscope. This release also extends the triggering capabilities available in MultiScope to the oscilloscope’s full range of triggering capabilities when triggering from the leader scope.

Eye Contour Software added to EZJIT Complete (N8823A)

Figure 5 – Eye Contours

Reduce your test time by using the Keysight eye contour software on any digital signal.  Originally designed for DDR4, Keysight is the only company whose eye contour algorithm has been approved by JEDEC.  This software extrapolates noise and jitter trends from the measured signal to predict how they eye will close over time, eliminating the need to run the eye test for days or weeks to find out.

Customizable Mask Editor

Figure 6 – Custom Mask Editor

Looking for a glitch? With the new custom mask editor, it is quick and easy to set up a custom mask test.  The editor provides fifteen points to drag and drop on the screen, allowing you to design the mask test you want in seconds.

Save Time with the Easy Analysis Gallery

Figure 7 – Analysis Gallery

 

Not sure where to find the measurement you’re looking for?  Check the analysis gallery.  It is a one-stop-shop of analysis options and measurements, represented graphically so you can easily find and run the test you’re looking for.  Your testing time is valuable, don’t spend it searching through menus to find a measurement.

And More…

There are a number of additional enhancements with the Infiniium 5.60 upgrade, including:

– CAN-FD protocol and decode is now included in the automotive bundle option (N8803C). This bundle includes protocol decoding for CAN, LIN, FlexRay and CAN-FD.

Figure 8 – Quick Jitter and Quick Eye Diagram menu

– Quick jitter and Quick eye diagram options.  Instead of going through lengthy set up menus, you can do the quick setup option and set up your jitter or eye diagram analysis in just two clicks.

The Infiniium oscilloscopes now have more capabilities than ever. Armed with 5.60 you are equipped to test and impress like never before.  Whether you’re looking for digital memory analysis, designing power systems, or work in the automotive industry, we have test solutions for you.

Check out the Infiniium software, version 5.60 update!

Zombie Apocalypse Survival Guide: Oscilloscope Edition

As electrical engineers there are certain rules that we live and die by each day.  Probably, the most common of these is Ohm’s law.   No matter what we are doing it always seems to come back to V = I*R, doesn’t it? That silly little equation we learned way back in our youth, maybe in Engineering 101 or our first Physics class, lays the foundation for everything in our field.  But what about the other equations and rules that we worship and obey like a zombie survival guide during the apocalypse?  Likely, names like Nyquist and Kirchhoff come to mind. And as we delve further into our specific fields, the more specific and sometimes diversified these rules become – after all, there are many different zombies out there and each needs its respective weapon.   Sometimes, that weapon is an oscilloscope.

So what rules or guidelines are you thinking about when you are planning to purchase a scope?  Probably, you’ve thought again of things like Nyquist in terms of sample rate.  You’re thinking about memory depth and waveform update rate.  And the noobs, less likely to survive a zombie attack, might be thinking, “Give me the highest possible bandwidth!”  But you, seasoned veteran of the apocalypse, obviously know that more bandwidth is not necessarily better.

A good rule of thumb for selecting the bandwidth of your dreamy new oscilloscope is to choose a bandwidth that is 3 times the fastest frequency content in the signal you are looking to analyze.  This rule of thumb is for analog signals.  If you are on the digital side, then your rule of thumb is 5 times the clock rate of your digital signals. There is a great blog post below (What is oscilloscope system bandwidth and how do I find the bandwidth of the scope + probe) and app note (Evaluating Oscilloscope Bandwidths for Your Application) that go into more details on this if you want to get into the nitty gritty of the nerdy and work out some equations.

But in general, the 3x for analog and 5x for digital BW rule of thumb guarantees that you will have enough bandwidth to properly observe your waveform without taking in too much high frequency content, which will show itself as noise on your desired measurement. Noise is Gaussian, so a higher bandwidth scope sees higher frequency noise.

But what if, you have been bitten by the Maximum Bandwidth Zombie?  You came down with the fever and couldn’t turn your mind away from that crazy high bandwidth scope, even though most of your applications are really only operating around 2 MHz or so.  Or maybe you simply purchased a scope for a higher bandwidth application than what you need in this very moment.  Perhaps, in most cases you are after Runner zombies so you purchase a high bandwidth scope, but occasionally you have to deal with the standard Walkers.  Don’t worry, your oscilloscope is a many facetted weapon.  This is probably a situation in which you will want to apply bandwidth limiting.

So you turn on bandwidth limiting and suddenly you’ve gone from having a noisy signal and may be experiencing ghosting (a situation in which you’re seeing an additional waveform capture on the screen) to having a nice clean waveform capture.

Here’s an example.  Below is a screenshot from a Keysight MSO-X 3104T.  This scope has a bandwidth of 1 GHz.  On channel 1, I’ve input a 1 MHz sine wave and, for demonstration purposes, mixed it with noise from an 80 MHz function generator.   Because I’m using a 1 GHz scope, I’m observing my desired 1 MHz sine wave distorted with the noise from the function generator and any noise in the environment that the scope or probe configuration might be picking up. You’ll also observe the extra, faint signal on screen. This is the ghosting effect I referred to earlier.  This is happening because the scope is sometimes triggering on what appears to be the falling edge of the desired signal but actually a rising edge in the noise.  This is not pretty measurement, am I right?

Figure 1 – 1 MHz signal with noise

 

Now, I select the Channel 1 menu and I turn on BW Limit.  Bandwidth limiting can be applied to each channel separately.  The Bandwidth Limit feature on this scope reduces the maximum bandwidth to 20 MHz.

With the bandwidth limit turned on, the high frequency noise content has been filtered out, and the desired crisp waveform is what remains. See figure 2.  One zombie down.

Figure 2 – 1 MHz signal with noise + BW Limit turned ON

 

Make sure to check out the bandwidth limiting capabilities of your oscilloscope. Keysight has a wide range of options depending on the scope you are using.  For example, the InfiniiVision 6000 X-Series oscilloscope lets you select a 200 MHz BW Limit in addition to the 20 MHz BW Limit option shown above on the 3000T X-Series.  The Infiniium scopes offer even more possibilities.  For example, the MSO-S804A is an 8 GHz scope and allows you to emulate a 6 GHz, 4GHz, 2.5 GHz, 2 GHz, 1 GHz, and even a 500 MHz scope.

As I said before, Keysight is here to help you slay all forms of zombies.