8-in-1 Oscilloscope - Helps you troubleshoot signal problems and anomalies faster

The Oscilloscope of the Future - More Than Just an Oscilloscope

Test engineering teams have a very challenging task to accomplish. Engineers are constantly under pressure on test time and test schedule due to an endless stream of technical issues. In most cases, they are also in a dilemma where the test equipment is not powerful enough, not powerful enough, or even neither of them can meet their needs. Some of the test instruments commonly used by engineers include oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, function generators, frequency response analyzers, logic analyzers, protocol analyzers, counters, and digital voltmeters (DVMs). Engineers need to use these tools to perform different tests, and you can imagine how crowded the space on the test bench is. Now, what if you are an engineer with an oscilloscope of the future, and all the test instrument functions you need are integrated into one instrument?

Test bench of the future

Let's imagine what the oscilloscope of the future will look like - you might want to have the following test instruments on your test bench.

Digital Oscilloscope: 8 channels, 6 GHz, 16 GSa/s

Oscilloscopes are critical when performing time domain signal analysis. For many measurement scenarios, oscilloscopes are the most commonly used test instruments. Today, multiple inputs and outputs of devices under test need to be tested simultaneously because they contain dense input/output (I/O) ports. Emerging technologies such as Wi-Fi 6 and 5G FR1 also require bandwidths above 2 GHz. Choosing a digital oscilloscope with 8 analog channels and 6 GHz bandwidth can provide excellent scalability to ensure that current and future test requirements are met, see Figure 2.

Figure 2. Screen view of a digital oscilloscope with 8 analog channels and 6 GHz bandwidth

Waveform generator: 50 MHz

Most tests require a 50 MHz waveform generator. The waveform generator should have a variety of pre-configured common waveforms for users to use directly, such as sine, square, pulse, triangle, ramp, noise, DC, heart rate, sinc, exponential rise/fall, and arbitrary waveforms. It must be convenient for users to send command signals, simulate channel noise, and easily perform stress testing on devices.

Frequency Response Analyzer: 50 MHz, Magnitude and Phase

The stress testing process is done using a matched 50 MHz frequency response analyzer (FRA) with a 50 MHz waveform generator as input stimulus. While the oscilloscope provides time domain information, the FRA provides frequency response information. You should be able to view the Bode plot in single or swept frequency mode. Figure 3 shows that it is important to verify that there are up to 1,000 test points within the test range and that automatic gain/phase margin is allowed.

Figure 3. Amplitude and phase Bode plots.

Real-time spectrum analyzer: 320 MHz analysis bandwidth

Although an FRA can provide frequency response analysis, a spectrum analyzer is essential to capture signal anomalies in the frequency domain. If you have difficulty detecting signal anomalies, it is better to use a real-time spectrum analyzer (RTSA) rather than a standalone basic fast Fourier transform (FFT) method to accurately capture signal anomalies. Figure 4 shows that the RTSA captures signal anomalies in the frequency domain with 100% probability, even for asynchronous anomalies. With an RTSA, you can also detect signal anomalies caused by intermittent power supply noise and noise effects, signal crosstalk, and environmental effects on the signal.

Figure 4. Comparison of the same Bluetooth™ signal detected by FFT (top) and RTSA (bottom). RTSA provides 400 times more information than FFT.

Keysight Technologies: Fourier Theory/Fourier Theoryzhuanlan.zhihu.com

Logic Analyzer and Mixed Signal Oscilloscope: 16 channels, 2 ns, 8 GSa/s

Almost all devices under test are mixed signal devices. Regardless of the application area, the convergence of technologies has resulted in both analog I/O and digital I/O within a single device under test. You need to synchronously correlate the analog and digital domains during testing. Figure 5 shows the results obtained from a logic analyzer with mixed signal oscilloscope (MSO) capabilities, which has at least 16 channels connected to these different types of signals. Other important requirements include data parsing, protocol triggering, and decoding capabilities. The logic channel requires a high sampling rate of at least 8 GSa/s.

Figure 5. Using MSO function to achieve correlation and synchronization of analog and digital domains

Protocol analyzer: dozens of protocols

A logic analyzer will help you perform digital domain signal analysis. However, you must take into account all levels of physical anomalies to ensure accurate test results. A protocol analyzer is an essential tool for implementing hardware triggering and analog data synchronization. During testing, you may frequently use many protocol triggering and decoding functions. The following protocols are widely used in different application areas:

• Low Speed: I2C, SPI, Quad SPI, eSPI, Quad eSPI, RS232/UART, I2S, SVID, JTAG, Manchester, and 10/100 Ethernet
• MIPI: RFFE, I3C, and SPMI
• USB: USB 2, USB 3, USB-PD, and eUSB2
• Automotive: CA / CAN FD, LIN, SENT, and 100Base-T1
• Military/Aerospace: ARINC, MIL-STD 1553, and SpaceWire

You could perform this analysis manually using a logic analyzer, but developing just the protocol triggering and decode could take hours. You might prefer to spend your limited time on actual testing and debugging rather than developing preliminary code.

Digital Voltmeter: 4-digit Resolution and 10-digit Counter

Engineers need a digital voltmeter (DVM) and a counter to perform quick, routine test measurements. As shown in Figure 6 below, you will find these two basic instruments on most test benches:

• Use a DVM with at least 4-bit resolution to quickly measure AC RMS, DC, and DC RMS parameters.

• When using the 10-bit counter, it can mainly perform frequency counting, period counting, totalization, qualifier triggering, and A/B ratio calculation.

Figure 6. DVM and counter with multiple modes

When using these test instruments, whether it is instrument procurement, space management, wiring and interconnection, hardware/software integration, or actual testing, measurement, data storage and result duplication, it will cause trouble for test engineers.

The oscilloscope of the future

What will the oscilloscope of the future look like? Imagine a test bench where all test equipment is located on the same platform. An all-in-one instrument can help you organize your test bench while making your workflow easier, making your measurements more accurate, and making your results more repeatable for multi-channel measurements. This is the oscilloscope of the future.

Clean up a cluttered test bench and reduce setup and testing time

Eight powerful instruments on a single platform will unclutter your cluttered test bench, shorten setup and test time, and minimize the effects of crosstalk. You can save a lot of money by no longer needing multiple power supplies or batteries to power the various test instruments on your test bench. You don't have to spend most of your time setting up test equipment for each device under test. Efficiently present, capture, analyze, and record data on a single screen instead of multiple separate instruments. This ability can further reduce test time by reducing the background processing tasks you must complete before performing a test. Figure 7 shows a comparison between the current measurement system and the future oscilloscope.

Product size is reduced proportionally!

Figure 7. Tomorrow's oscilloscopes solve the problems of cluttered test benches and lack of space.

Eliminate signal problems and anomalies faster

Tomorrow’s oscilloscopes will help you save a lot of engineering time by quickly detecting signal problems and anomalies. The data should also be properly correlated with all other signals that may be causing the anomaly. The “Fault Hunter” feature can learn “normal” signals and compare them to the measured signals over a specific time period to automatically find “abnormal” signals, greatly reducing test time. You can compare data collected over the weekend to quickly understand when, where, and why the anomaly occurred. The Fault Hunter feature allows you to quickly find a way to troubleshoot the anomaly, as shown in Figure 8 below.

Figure 8. Fault Hunter function settings and results page - automatic analysis of signal anomalies

Requirements for Digital and IoT Engineers

Digital/IoT engineers must test the frequency domain characteristics of the device under test and display the results in a spectrum view versus power density. Performing simultaneous frequency measurements on multiple channels requires up to eight channels, as shown in Figure 9, while capturing short or transient signals with a gapless real-time spectrum analyzer (RTSA). In some cases, you need to digitally down-convert I/Q data streams up to 2 GHz. Signal isolation using flexible frequency mask triggering is helpful for troubleshooting. To extract signal features, we also need to perform advanced signal analysis on multiple source codes, including MATLAB.

Figure 9. In-depth signal analysis using RTSA

Requirements for high-speed digital engineers

High-speed digital engineers face other test requirements. One of their key tasks is to perform hardware triggering to capture anomalies at the physical layer. Future oscilloscopes will require powerful processing capabilities, and they will use advanced application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) to increase decoding speed and efficiently obtain valid test results. Triggering is essential for accurate signal characterization because it synchronizes the oscilloscope's horizontal scan to an appropriate signal point. Trigger control allows engineers to stabilize repetitive waveforms and capture single-shot waveforms. Oscilloscopes require a range of protocol triggering, decoding, and built-in automated compliance testing test functions, as shown in Figure 10 below. With internal de-embedding, you can easily remove cable or fixture effects.