The pricing of the oscilloscopes have come down slightly over a period of years inspite of huge leaps in performance and complexity.
The humble “Oscilloscope” is one of the most fundamental tools of engineering. No mater which engineering major you were in, it is highly likely that you have worked on them, seen them or at very least heard about them. They are primarily used to capture signals and study their salient features. And what is a signal you ask? , well as per basic definition it is a “detectable physical quantity or impulse (as a voltage, current, or magnetic field strength) by which messages or information can be transmitted” . Since signals are all around us, so oscilloscopes will remain an integral part of academia and research for some time to come.
Choosing the best oscilloscope to suit your needs with budget constrained funds can be a daunting proposition. Finding a scope that will enable you to do what you need efficiently and accurately means you have to pore over a host of specifications, some of which may or may not apply to your situation or tasks
Digital oscilloscopes have come down in price amazingly over the past few years, but can you get a good scope which fits your budget? Do you really need some of the more advanced scope features?
Mr. Sanchit Bhatia, Application Engineer, Keysight Technologies India Pvt. Ltd. shares here oscilloscope key markets and their requirements and features Keysight budget friendly scopes.
Oscilloscopes Key markets in India
a.) Education – A huge number of engineering colleges in India teach electrical and electronics engineering courses and oscilloscopes are used in engineering labs of these courses.
This segment is very important from a brand building and familiarity perspective as engineers prefer to use those oscilloscopes in their jobs which they had used in their colleges
Generally education labs need 20-50 MHz oscilloscopes.
b.) Industrial – This segment mainly does general purpose voltage and time measurements on analog, digital and mixed signal circuits. Oscilloscope are a common tool here as they are an eye to the electronic world.
This segments uses oscilloscopes from few 100 MHz to 4 GHz.
c.) Semiconductor Design Validation – This is the market segment of valuation of high speed semiconductors which needs the highest bandwidth. Key technologies include PCIe, USB, SATA, HDMI, Ethernet, MIPI etc.
Here bandwidths upto 60 GHz are needed.
Features and Key requirements
Features and key requirements are different for different market segments.
a.) Education – This segment is a very price sensitive segment and needs low cost oscilloscopes with multiple instruments integrated. For example an oscilloscope having the capabilities of function generator, DMM, frequency counter, logic analyzer etc is very important for these this segment so that they don’t have to buy multiple instruments for each bench and can manage with the least number of instruments at competitive cost.
b.) Industrial – This segment needs variety of probes including current probes, power rail probes, differential active probes along with analysis tools for USB, DDR, I2C, automotive buses etc.
This segments looks for good performance at competitive cost and also future upgradeability in terms of bandwidth and options.
c.) Semiconductor Design Validation – This segment needs the highest performance and most complex analysis. This segments requires very low jitter floor, very low vertical noise floor, highest bandwidth, flattest response, highest time scale accuracy, high sampling rate etc. Also this segment requires the most complex analysis tools like jitter analysis, De-embedding, Equalization and various compliance tools for SATA, PCIe, HDMI, Ethernet etc.
The best featured and budget friendly oscilloscope from Keysight
Best Featured – The Z Series oscilloscope from Keysight is the best featured oscilloscope based on patented InP semiconductor process with 0.1 ppm time scale accuracy, 100fs intrinsic jitter, lowest noise floor with Bandwidth upto 63 GHz. It features state of the art jitter analysis tools, equalization tools, User Defined Applications, Compliance softwares, Complex De-embedding, Optical Detector etc. The Z Series is best suited for Semiconductor Design Validation Market.
Best Budget Friendly – Keysight 1000X features a very low price with excellent features for Industrial and Education segments. The price starts at Rs 24999 for education with inbuilt oscilloscope, waveform generator, protocol analyzer, voltmeter, frequency counter and frequency response analyzer with Bandwidths upto 100 MHz.
