Oscilloscopes are continuing their march to embrace modern technologies with the current focus on integrating multiple domains into a single instrument, new usability capabilities and the never-ending quest for higher bandwidth and signal clarity.
Oscilloscopes are the basic test and debug equipment found in every phase of electrical or electronic development. Scope evolution has gone through major breakthroughs.
Mixed Domain Oscilloscopes can be considered as a revolutionary leap as it lets a user see both the time and frequency domains in one glance, which, in turn, helps in analyzing your designs in a way never before possible.
But first, let’s take a step back and assess the significance of MDOs. There have been two major shifts in oscilloscope technology since the 1970’s that have significantly enhanced the way these instruments are used. The first was the switch from cathode ray tube (CRT) displays to pixel based displays. Pixel based display technology allowed scopes to shrink in depth considerably and it enabled easy overlay of text and cursors, which tremendously enhanced the presentation and examination of waveform data. The second had to do with the coming of digital technology that allowed for automated measurements, analytical math functions, mixed signal and mixed domain measurements, amongst other features.
The Story of Scope Brands
Sanchit Bhatia, Application Engineer, Keysight Technologies India Pvt. Ltd.
Keysight history of oscilloscopes dates back to the HP (Hewlett Packard) Era when HP oscilloscopes were very popular in the 1970s and beyond. These were mainly the analog oscilloscopes. Oscilloscopes turned digital with the advent of computing technology.
Agilent was spinoff from HP. HP-Agilent introduced industry first Mixed Signal Oscilloscope (MSO) the latest oscilloscopes that Keysight (Formerly Agilent) has an analog bandwidth of 63 GHz with sample rate of 160GS/s. Also Keysight has the only 10 bit 8 GHz oscilloscope in the market.
Keysight uses its Measurement Science expertise in its extremely advanced software engines for de-embedding and signal processing to ensure most accurate measurements.
Courtesy Rohde-Schwarz
“Rohde & Schwarz has more than 80 years’ experience in providing precision and reliable Test and Measurement instruments for RF, microwave and electronic industry. By leveraging expertise on RF and microwave, Rohde & Schwarz has entered Time domain market (Digital Storage Oscilloscopes) since 2009.
Rohde & Schwarz has Digital Storage Oscilloscope’s of Bandwidth from 200 MHz up to 4 GHz to address different market segments.
Rohde & Schwarz has started their scope journey with RTM and RTO Series. Over the years they have added many models and presently having 17 models covering bandwidth from 200 MHz to 4 GHz, 2 channel or 4 channels to address different markets. These scopes are Bandwidth upgradable to protect the investment of the buyers.
The scopes are offered with upgradable features – Mixed Signal Oscilloscope with 16 digital channels, Serial protocol triggering & decoding options like RS 232/UART, I2C, SPI, CAN/LIN, Flexray, MIL 1553 etc….”.
Sumit Sharma, Marketing Manager – India, Good Will Instrument Co., Ltd.
“With the rapid advancement of technology, the oscilloscope market has also been shifting from conventional analog oscilloscopes, which displays the electronic waveforms through a CRT, towards Digital Storage Oscilloscopes (DSO). The major function of a DSO not only converts signals from analog to digital, but also stores testing data, allowing remote control and transmitting data through various interfaces. In spite of the strengths of DSOs, analog oscilloscopes still play an important role of providing real-time signal and waveform display.
Due to the revolution of Integrated circuits during 1990 to 2000, all embedded system designers required advanced testing capabilities to resolve their daily problem, so the Mixed Signal Oscilloscope emerged in the beginning of 2000. There has been a growing need for detecting digital signals which are usually presented by 2 discrete voltage levels. A logic analyser is best fit for such digital signal measurements. A logic analyzer also has the benefit of multiple channel input measurements, which is usually limited to 2 or 4 channels in oscilloscopes. Now-a-days, some system designers not only need a MSO but also an instrument which can afford to do frequency and time domain analysis simultaneously.”
Sridhar AC, Director Sales, SIEPRO Technocrats Pvt Ltd.
Oscilloscope being a major part of any electronic lab setup has always held a key point in the analysis and result oriented research of electronic signals in Industry and Educational Sector. Holding the kings share, oscilloscopes are the favourites for any organisation related to the electronic industry. Considering this to be the motive one could easily establish the need and the intensity behind the evolution of oscilloscopes. This brings in the passion and challenges which mark the history of oscilloscopes in market which gives user-friendly and accurate signal analysis.
Features of Generation Scopes
Sanchit Bhatia, Application Engineer, Keysight Technologies India Pvt. Ltd.
The major technology that has brought the bandwidth revolution with exceptionally low noise floor and high transistor breakdown voltage is the InP (Indium Phosphide) semiconductor process.
Keysight high bandwidth oscilloscopes have analog bandwidth upto 63 GHz with lowest noise floor and can even accept +-5V signal directly at the input because the front end ASICs are fabricated using the InP semiconductor process within Keysight’s own fabrication facility.
Secondly Keysight has introduced the world’s most accurate mid bandwidth (8 GHz) oscilloscope by introducing a 10-bit Analog to Digital converter sampling at 20GS/s. This is to ensure 4 times more accuracy than 8 bit oscilloscopes.
Keysight has introduced world class de-embedding technologies in oscilloscopes to compensate the effects of cables, connectors, traces etc at high frequencies.
Keysight has a special technology called “Precision Probe” and “Precision Cable” in which the oscilloscopes measure insertion loss of cables, traces, connectors and probes without requiring an external network analyzer and compensate the same automatically.
Features of Next Generation scopes:
– Higher accuracy in voltage resolution by increasing the number of ADC bits while maintaining high bandwidths.
– Highly sophisticated softwares for data analysis and automation.
– More integration with several instruments in one – including data generator, logic analyzer etc.
Courtesy Rohde-Schwarz
“The continuous level of integration at electronic designs raises new challenges for test and debugging with oscilloscopes. The buzz word is “Embedded design”. Former truly isolated functional blocks and circuit components now get closely integrated on circuit board or even multi-chip level. For system debugging a time-correlated analysis of analog signals such as switched mode power supplies or D/A converters, as well as digital signals of various communication and programming interfaces is required. Additional complexity is given by protocol-based interfaces or integrated RF components.
With the strength and insight of German technology, when we introduced the oscilloscope it came with a few industry first despite of our new entry, and many still remain number one: the first 1,000,000 wfm/s in the market, highest ENOB, first digital trigger, first trigger hysteresis, first ProbeMeter and Microbutton, first single core ADC etc. All of which makes engineers job easier, addressing challenging debugging needs and getting more accurate result.
A recent evolution in oscilloscopes is the digital trigger system that is implemented in the R&S RTO and RTE Digital Oscilloscopes. It enables most precise triggering and adds new functionality to define trigger conditions based on the digital processing capability. Filtering and freely adjustable hysteresis are some examples.
With the new quality of input sensitivity down to 1mV/div, the low noise performance and high measurement dynamic of the analog input channels, as well as the fast FFT processing Rohde & Schwarz enabled the first time reasonable spectrum analysis capabilities on digital oscilloscope. Electronic designer use R&S RTO and R&S RTE FFT for example for EMI debugging to identify emission sources fast, straight at their lab bench.
Oscilloscopes covers wide based market as it is a general purpose test instrument. With the addition of digital channels, they were called “Mixed signal oscilloscopes (MSO)”. The essential need for MSO is driven by the requirement to correlate data content, timing and signal fidelity of analog signals with additional digital channels (e.g. mixed signal chip with a fast serial data line and lower speed digital chip control lines).The most prominent application is design & verification of “Embedded Designs”. To address this market, Mixed Signal option is introduced with High Sampling rate, deep memory and High waveform update which are critical for debugging & verification of digital designs.
MIL 1553 and ARINC 429 are two most common serial data buses used in aircraft. R&S scopes introduce event triggering and protocol decoding, to investigate bus traffic; we can address the Aerospace & Defence customer requirements with the introduction of these buses.
The Software I/Q interface option on RTO series scopes provides filtered ,down converted and resampled I/Q data which is the basis for supporting analyzing additional technologies with R&S tools- FS-K96 will provide OFDM modulation analysis, FS-K112 will provide NFC analysis and
FS-K10X Software for transmitter measurements on LTE and LTE-Advanced base stations (Downlink) and user equipment (Uplink).”
Sumit Sharma, Marketing Manager – India, Good Will Instrument Co., Ltd.
“As the touch panel technology has been successfully being used in mobile systems, more and more electronic device will feature this technology. In this fashion, a traditional Hand-Held oscilloscope is being upgraded to the full touch screen hand-held scope as the next-generation transition. This may minimize the gap between high end and low end scopes and bring the whole new experience of using oscilloscopes to engineers.
Digital oscilloscopes have entered an epoch-making generation. Compact appearance, full touch screen, and abundant functions together make this exquisite oscilloscope a very powerful test and measurement instrument which tremendously facilitate engineers to solve complex challenges. This is the latest definition of the alluring- brand-new-generation oscilloscope defined by GW Instek. That is the reason why she is called the Angel of the Test and Measurement Industry. GDS-200/300 series oscilloscopes adopt full touch panel capacitive LCD. In the era of smart phone explosion, GW Instek can also usher users into the full touch panel measurement era. With only one finger, users not only can move waveform up and down but also the trigger line position. Two-point touch panel is also applied. Engineers can use two fingers to adjust vertical voltage level and to enlarge or narrow time division scale. The brand new touch panel and swift response renew your measurement concept.
As the digital signal speed is getting faster, so the higher bandwidth seems to be the key trend for high end oscilloscopes. Next, the trend is to focus on higher sampling rate and deeper memory length as well. And the low end oscilloscopes will be priced very competitively but the features will be enhanced compared to older ones.
New generation oscilloscopes will have High speed digital transmission technologies like USB3.0, Thunderbolt and 10Gb Ethernet etc.
With a strong focus on high quality, economical measurement solutions for the educational and industrial manufacturing markets, GW Instek has developed a solid brand image and reputation for reliability, integrity and innovation. GW Instek’s reputation has been built upon the philosophy of integrity, quality, and creativity as well as the accumulation of years of experience. Rich experience and expertise allow GW Instek to deliver high-performance test solutions that address unique requirements of each client and that are backed by comprehensive after-sales support, warranty and calibration services, with one of the industry’s best price vs. performance offerings. GW Instek conforms to its core philosophy, lowest TCO, that is to create values for his partners and customers by offering products with lowest Total Cost of Ownership. A durable, stable, and reliable product is the essential pillar to reduce product lifetime cost. In other words, it squeezes out the best quality from the lowest unit cost for clients.”
Sridhar AC, Director Sales, SIEPRO Technocrats Pvt Ltd.
“Our Partner, Micsig, have changed the stereotypical approach towards oscilloscopes by investing a huge amount of time and resources towards the development of one of its kind TABLET OSCILLOSCOPES that are a fine mixture of tablet and an oscilloscope. The features that are present in a conventional oscilloscope are retained however, a new splash of Touch capabilities alongside cutting edge technology makes the innovation quite intriguing. Considering the touch “culture” and its various benefits, this oscilloscope revolution simplifies the user experience. An Experienced engineer would love this innovation whilst an inexperienced user is not a complete stranger.
We believe in creating competition, rather than being a part of a current competition. Innovation, Out-of-Box thinking and creativity are the major contributors to be different in any competition. Following this approach the products with which we are associated are in a different league of their own. Moving forward this approach will be our CORE MANTRA. We are always excited to lead the way and create competition.
We are already involved in the market with reference to next generation oscilloscopes, we consider “Tablet Oscilloscope” or a “Touch enabled oscilloscope’ to be the next generation oscilloscope. Innovating further we plan to add some more features to our oscilloscope in the effort to make it more compact and user friendly.
Defence sector is the most exciting market where we are interested to establish ourselves as a Key vendor for oscilloscopes, however we are interested to make our products presence in all segments of the electronic industry and education.
Modern Scopes: Mixed and Multi Domain
Modern oscilloscopes capture, view, measure, and analyze complex RF signals in the time, frequency, and modulation domains. Time-domain analysis, the original oscilloscope function, allows users to see the signal’s modulation envelope. It also enables measurement of signal-transition times, overshoot, and other time-related characteristics.
But wireless integration isn’t the only thing that’s changing. With complexity on the rise, modern mixed-signal designs are proving to be a worthy adversary to designers. Embedded-system design engineers are having to wear multiple hats in order to efficiently troubleshoot and debug the latest designs. This means tackling such activities as designing power supplies and measuring power efficiency, or having to track down sources of noise.
Oscilloscopes are continuing their march to embrace modern technologies with the current focus on integrating multiple domains into a single instrument, new usability capabilities and the never-ending quest for higher bandwidth and signal clarity.
While general-purpose oscilloscopes remain a staple of the engineering workbench, the growing complexity of electronics devices, the proliferation of wireless capabilities into all kinds of products and the more stringent requirements around power efficiency are all upping the ante for additional functionality to be used in conjunction with the base oscilloscope in a more efficient fashion. In addition, the general trend toward high-speed input/output connections like PCI Express and USB is driving demand for higher-speed oscilloscope capabilities — along with faster throughput.
As a result of these trends, we’re seeing the rise of the multi-domain instrument, with leading oscilloscope vendors — including National Instruments, Keysight Technologies (Former Agilent), Tektronix, Pico Technologies and others — integrating more functionality as part of a single device, according to Prathima Bommakanti, an industry analyst with Frost & Sullivan.
“Users prefer to use the same instrument for different applications in their workflow,” Bommakanti says, adding that spectrum analyzers, logic analyzers, function generators and other capabilities are becoming standard on the core oscilloscope. “Users have a need for different capabilities, but they are requesting one box for testing.”
Multi-Task Focus Scopes
National Instruments is the latest company to put its spin on the concept of a multi-domain testing device with its introduction of VirtualBench, which integrates five instruments into an all-in-one device. VirtualBench, which is based on NI’s software-based approach to test and measurement, incorporates a mixed-signal oscilloscope, function generator, digital multi-meter, programmable PC power supply and digital I/O. The system interacts with users through software applications running on a PC or iPad.
Tektronix has been focused on multi-domain, mixed-signal oscilloscopes for the last few years. It’s part of its product development charter, which is all about helping engineers find the answers to problems in seconds instead of days or weeks, according to Gina Bonini, the company’s technical marketing manager. For example, given the rise of wireless radio capabilities in embedded systems, Tektronix was the first to pair an oscilloscope with a spectrum analyzer — in recognition that its customers needed a better way to coordinate testing among domains.
Tektronix research showed that more than 25% of oscilloscope users employ a spectrum analyzer multiple times per week, and more than 40% of embedded design projects include some form of wireless capability; hence the impetus to pair the two instruments together.
While the MDO4000 Mixed Domain Oscilloscope series broke ground in this arena, Tektronix followed up in February with the release of the MDO3000. The MDO3000 includes a spectrum analyzer, logic analyzer, protocol analyzer, arbitrary function generator and digital voltmeter, but it has been designed so users can add or customize other functionality at a later date. For example, they can implement performance upgrades for input frequency, or functional upgrades such as the addition of digital channels or protocol analysis, among other capabilities.
The MDO3000 features two or four analog input channels, with bandwidth ranging from 100 MHz to 1 GHz, 16 digital channels (optional), and one RF input channel. Other notable features include an optional integrated 50 MHz AFG functionality with eight times the arbitrary waveform record length; more than 280,000 waveforms per second capture rate displayed on a digital phosphor display for easily finding infrequent anomalies in a signal; and more than 125 available trigger combinations.
UNDERSTANDING THE TERMS
Mixed Domain Oscilloscopes
Combining an RF spectrum analyzer, logic analyzer, and digital oscilloscope and you get a mixed domain oscilloscope. When designing or working with systems that include digital signals, digital logic, and radio frequency communication, mixed domain oscilloscopes become an essential tool. The essential benefit of a mixed domain oscilloscope is seeing signals from each domain, analog, RF, and logic, time correlated to each other. This enables troubleshooting, debugging, and design testing that allows each signal to be correlated in time.
Mixed Signal Oscilloscopes
Often the capabilities of a digital oscilloscope and logic analyzer are needed together, which is why the mixed signal oscilloscope was developed. The mixed signal oscillocope combines a digital storage oscilloscope (or a digital phosphor oscilloscope) with a multi-channel logic analyzer. The digital triggering capability of the mixed signal oscilloscope aids the analysis of analog events that can trigger digital logic transitions.
