Mixed Signal Oscilloscopes Combine Monitoring, Correlation and Debugging

　　Debugging embedded designs often requires viewing analog and digital signal interactions. In this mixed-signal environment, engineers often cannot accurately predict problems that will arise during development. This is because typical oscilloscopes are limited to two or four analog channels, and in embedded designs, engineers sometimes need more channels than an oscilloscope can provide. Therefore, they need a test instrument that can acquire analog and digital signals simultaneously and display time-correlated images on a single display.

　　Easily monitor, correlate, and debug analog and digital signals on a single DPO4000 oscilloscope

　　Tektronix Inc. of the United States recently launched the MSO4000 mixed signal oscilloscope (MSO), which combines three powerful functions of advanced real-time oscilloscope, logic analyzer and breakthrough WaveInspector waveform search engine into a small and lightweight portable embedded design and debugging device.

　　David Hurt, marketing manager of new product planning for oscilloscopes at Tektronix, said that the MSO4000 oscilloscope series includes four product models with bandwidths ranging from 350MHz to 1GHz, with two or four analog channels and 16 digital channels, providing up to 20 time-correlated channels. The MSO4032 and MSO4034 provide 350MHz bandwidth on two and four analog channels, respectively. The MSO4054 provides 500MHz bandwidth on four analog channels, and the MSO4104 provides 1GHz bandwidth on four analog channels.

　　The MSO4104 provides a 5GS/s sampling rate on all channels, while the other models provide a 2.5GS/s sampling rate on all channels. All models come standard with 10M of recording memory on all analog and digital channels.

　　The MSO4000 provides two methods for capturing digital waveform data. 1) The main digital acquisition mode captures 10M samples at a sampling rate of 500MS/s (2ns resolution). 2) The MSO4000 also provides MagniVu ultra-high-resolution signal acquisition technology, which acquires 10,000 samples at a sampling rate of up to 16.5GS/s (60.6ps resolution). The oscilloscope will simultaneously acquire waveform data in the main mode and MagniVu mode at each trigger, and users can view these waveforms at any time whether they are running or stopped.

　　MSO4000 provides a breakthrough WaveInspector on all analog and digital channels, which can discover and effectively view, find and analyze waveform data. Through automatic waveform translation and scrolling display, user-defined marks and intelligent search and find functions. All MSO4000 models provide a 10.4-inch XGA color display, a thickness of only 13.7cm, and a weight of 2.5kg, which is very suitable for carrying.

　　The MSO4000 also combines industry-leading technical specifications, familiar operation, innovative debugging capabilities and comprehensive functional support to monitor, trigger and decode parallel buses and the most commonly used serial buses in embedded design, such as I2C, SPI, CAN and RS-232.

　　It is understood that the Tektronix P6516 digital probe is also launched with the MSO4000 oscilloscope. Each probe provides two 8-channel adapter clips, each adapter clip can detect components up to 8 feet away, which is very convenient for reaching multiple areas on the circuit board with one probe. The lead color code associates the probe tip with the signal track on the display. The sleek P6516 probe leads will not be confused and can be easily connected to the device under test.