What you should know about the next generation test solution for high-speed serial data

The latest serial technologies are faster and often more complex than previous generations, requiring test equipment with greater performance and more extensive analysis capabilities. Tektronix products meet these demands, and its serial data test and measurement solutions cover the entire product development value chain from chip manufacturers to product integrators.

The new generation of Tektronix measurement tools includes real-time oscilloscopes, sampling oscilloscopes, differential probes, logic analyzers, and signal sources to help engineers meet the challenges of serial data measurement. These next-generation instruments and application software together form a complete set of new test platform solutions for high-speed serial data. The solution's excellent performance ensures that the most complex and challenging serial data signals can be captured, displayed, and analyzed. If you are interested in high-speed serial data testing, you should be familiar with the following mainstream equipment solutions.

 

 

Real-time oscilloscope

Tektronix real-time oscilloscopes enable engineers to capture continuous data in the multi-gigabit range with excellent signal fidelity. Real-time oscilloscopes have become an ideal tool for serial data analysis and testing.

 

Tektronix DPO/DSA70000B digital phosphor oscilloscope and serial analyzer provides ultra-high bandwidth and sampling rate, real-time data acquisition and low jitter noise floor performance, which is very suitable for precise timing and jitter measurement. Synchronous real-time sampling provides critical acquisition flexibility for testing multi-channel serial data. Custom serial data functions can be extended to high-speed serial triggering, clock recovery and protocol decoding, as well as compliance testing for multiple industry standards. DSA70000B combines the most comprehensive serial data debug and analysis functions with the industry's most advanced oscilloscope hardware platform.

 

DPOJET serial compliance test and analysis software is standard on all DSA70000B models and optional on digital phosphor oscilloscope (DPO) models. Comprehensive analysis capabilities transform the oscilloscope mainframe into a powerful automated validation and compliance test platform, including software clock recovery, eye diagrams, and a full set of standard-specific parameter measurements for amplitude, timing, and jitter, making it ideal for testing serial standards with data rates up to 10 Gb/s.

 

In addition, specific conformance test options supported by these schemes include:

PCI Express compliance testing

FB-DIMM consistency test

SATA and SAS analysis conformance testing

InfiniBand conformance testing

DDR2/3, GDDR, LPDDR verification test

Tektronix also offers analysis and test software packages for HDMI, DisplayPort, Ultra-Wideband, Ethernet and USB. These software solutions support the full set of test requirements defined in each standard, providing fast and repeatable test results for multiple design groups and suppliers.

 

 

Ultra-Wideband Sampling Oscilloscope

Tektronix sampling oscilloscopes are ultra-wideband instruments that combine the lowest vertical noise and best jitter and timing performance to provide high-precision waveform measurement results. Due to the excellent technical performance and extensive measurement and analysis capabilities of Tektronix sampling oscilloscopes, these devices are widely regarded as the best test standard for measuring Gigabit serial data components, transceivers and transmission systems.

 

DSA8200 is a highly modular sampling oscilloscope that can be used for optical and electrical signal testing, and can achieve accurate signal feature description, flexible clock recovery and extended analysis. Combined with 80SJNB analysis software, DSA8200 can provide a full range of jitter, noise and bit error rate (BER) analysis for data transmission rates from 1 Gb/s to 60 Gb/s.

 

Accurately analyzing signal and interconnect performance in both the time and frequency domains is critical to fully understand the effects of signal loss and crosstalk in today's high-speed serial designs. Industry standards such as PCI Express, Serial ATA, XAUI, and Infiniband increasingly require the use of S-parameters and impedance measurements to characterize these effects and ensure system interoperability. Industry-leading differential time domain reflectometry (TDR) performance enables complex network analysis of S-parameter frequency characteristics. 

 

IConnect software provides extended signal integrity analysis for the DSA8200. IConnect measures insertion and return loss, reflections, displays eye diagrams, and helps implement and display jitter, crosstalk, reflections, and ringing measurements. Applications include signal integrity analysis, impedance characterization, S-parameter measurements, eye diagram compliance testing, and fault isolation.

 

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Detection

Tektronix probing devices provide solutions for the critical path from the device under test (DUT) to the instrument. For low voltage differential signals, Tektronix probes have true differential performance and are optimized for signal fidelity, minimizing signal interference on the line. 

 

The P7300 and P7500 series high frequency active probes provide flexible connections and low line loading. The convenient interconnection combination system also supports a variety of DUT applications.

 

The P7300SMA series high frequency SMA differential probes provide 50 ohm direct cable inputs. The SMA direct cable inputs support serial data test fixtures and common mode DC voltage inputs and can be configured with real-time oscilloscopes for multi-channel acquisition. 

 

 

signal source

Tektronix signal generators are able to generate signals that mimic real-world conditions. If you need to simulate these conditions as realistically as possible, a programmable signal source is the right tool. To generate realistic signals comparable to today's data rates, you need a high-speed signal source such as an arbitrary waveform generator (AWG) or a data timing generator (DTG).

 

The AWG7000B Series enables designers to directly develop high-speed serial data buses and create, replicate and generate ideal, distorted or real signals, including those with noise, jitter, interference and other anomalies. The AWG7000B can generate any real waveform, as well as generate undesirable signals, or replay actual captured signals, including signal noise, jitter, pre-emphasis and de-emphasis, and multi-level signals up to 10-Gbits/s.

 

 

The DTG5000 Series combines the functionality of a data generator and a pulse generator. These instruments are capable of generating low jitter, high precision clock signals, multiple channels of parallel or serial data, and can generate serial data rates up to 3.35 Gb/s.

 

 

logic analyzer

Tektronix logic analyzers provide measurements to verify the performance and interaction between hardware and software subsystems. In serial data systems, this usually refers to the interaction between the physical, logical, and transport layers. Logic analyzers can capture bidirectional traffic and analyze transmissions, detect link transitions, and flow control.  

 

The performance, triggering and decoding capabilities of the TLA7000 Series logic analyzers simplify the design verification process and can decode serial data, recover embedded clocks and trigger on specific data characteristics. The large desktop can be expanded to support time-correlated analysis of multiple buses. For more complex signal integrity challenges, the TLA7000 can be combined with a Tektronix oscilloscope using iView software and interconnect hardware to obtain and create time-correlated views of digital and analog waveforms.