LeCroy offers range of oscilloscopes and analysers

LeCroy Corporation has introduced the Wavemaster 8 Zi Series of digital oscilloscopes and serial data analysers.

The series provides up to 30GHz of bandwidth, an 80GS/s sample rate, 512Mpt of analysis and more than 15GHz of edge triggering.

The Wavemaster 8 Zi Series features good instrument responsiveness, a fast analysis processing time, a large 15.3in (38.9cm) 16:9 high-definition touch-screen display (50 per cent larger than 12.4in displays) and the precision of Eye Doctor signal integrity tools.

Features previously announced with the Zi platform, such as Triggerscan rare-event capture, a removable front panel, an integrated second display and fast LSIB external data transfer (up to 250Mpt/s), are also available.

The combination of performance, speed, precision and capability provides engineers with deeper insight, faster debug and more efficient validation.

LeCroy has designed the 8 Zi Series as a single hardware platform, supporting all eight models spanning from 4GHz to 30GHz of bandwidth.

This means that engineers can leverage their investment and stay current with emerging high-speed technologies and serial data standards by purchasing only the bandwidth needed for current designs and upgrading to additional bandwidth as needs change.

Upgrades are available to 30GHz of bandwidth, which is useful for minimising capital investments.

The standard sample rate is 80GS/s for 20GHz to 30GHz bandwidths (40GS/s on all four channels at a reduced bandwidth).

For 4GHz to 16GHz bandwidths, the standard sample rate is 40GS/s on all four channels with an option to increase the sampling rate to 80GS/s on two channels.

10Mpt per channel is provided, with memory options up to 256Mpt per channel available.

All memory is available at full record lengths for analysis processing.

In 80GS/s mode, memory can be interleaved to 512Mpt per channel.

For serial data applications, eight new serial data analyser (SDA) models provide the same high-bandwidth range (from 4GHz to 30GHz) and a sample rate and analysis memory capability (with 20Mpt per channel standard) and are combined with LeCroy's SDA II serial data analysis tools and standard 3.125Gb/s serial trigger to provide a capability for implementing and debugging emerging, high-speed serial data standards, such as PCI Express (PCIe) 3.0 and USB 3.0.

The 8 Zi SDAs are based on the Wavemaster 8 Zi Series oscilloscope and are equipped with double the standard memory to capture more unit intervals in the eye diagram.

They include an enhanced high-speed serial pattern trigger that operates on up to 80-bit patterns and at speeds up to 3.125Gb/s.

The expansive SDA II toolset includes superior jitter breakdown methodologies and more precise jitter breakdown tools to increase confidence in measurements and to offer more complete insight faster than competitive tools.

Nearly one million unit intervals of PCIe can be captured, analysed and displayed in three seconds.

Additional tools, such as Isober (which identifies lines of constant bit error rate) and Mask Violation Locator make it easy to understand complex problems.

The cable de-embedding feature allows cable distortion effects to be removed to achieve more accurate timing and amplitude measurements on high-speed eye diagrams.

Complete, simultaneous views of eye diagrams, time interval error, bathtub curves, jitter histograms and other jitter breakdown analysis is standard in the SDA 8 Zi analysers.

LeCroy's advanced SDA II tools simplify the path to compliance testing by decreasing debug time and increasing the understanding of jitter through superior and more precise analysis of Rj and Dj breakdown.

At the compliance stage, automated Qualiphy packages are available for a variety of established standards, such as PCIe, SAS, SATA, HDMI, Displayport and XAUI.

Oscilloscopes with bandwidths of up to 30GHz are needed to test the fastest-emerging technologies in difficult measurement environments.

Challenges that were not very pronounced at rise times of 50ps or bit rates of 2.5Gb/s and slower become more problematic as rise times approach or become less than 25ps and bit rates exceed 5Gb/s.

At these speeds, engineers face signal integrity problems that were formerly limited to the microwave frequency domain, such as imperfect test fixtures and test circuit connections.

In addition, engineers implementing the next generation of high-speed serial data standards are faced with the challenge of faster and more complex signals, while, at the same time, the serial data channel (interconnect, transmission line and backplane) speeds have not commensurately increased, leading to problems with signal degradation in the serial data channel.

In addition, emerging serial data standards, such as USB 3.0, require simulation (emulation) of the signal transmission path to ensure reliable performance in all user environments.

Lastly, serial data receiver hardware is specifically designed to equalise for signal degradation, although engineers have no way of characterising the performance of their measured signals with receiver equalisation applied.

The solution, according to LeCroy, is its Eye Doctor signal integrity toolset, which provides a capability for cable and test fixture de-embedding, the modelling of pre-emphasis and de-emphasis, serial data channel emulation and serial data receiver equalisation.

It is now possible, within the scope environment and on full 256Mpt record lengths, to compensate for or emulate signal path effects and serial data receiver equalisation so as to precisely measure waveforms with high signal fidelity at any place in the test circuit under any test condition.

With the launch of the Wavemaster 8 Zi, Eye Doctor is now available in a more streamlined and easily accessible form.

Designed for long-memory operation and responsiveness, X-Stream II technology enables the high throughput of data, even when the oscilloscope is analysing eight 256Mpt waveforms.

This architecture uses variable waveform segment lengths to improve CPU cache memory efficiency, resulting in 10 to 20 times' faster processing compared to other oscilloscopes.

This eliminates the trade-offs between long memory length and quick processing.

Wavemaster 8 Zi's proprietary architecture design is augmented with an Intelcore2 Quad processor, high-speed serial data buses, a 64-bit OS and up to 8Gb of processor RAM.

The Wavemaster 8 Zi Series offers, as standard, more tools, as well as more ways to leverage the tools to get answers faster.

The WMZi-Spectrum option provides a spectral analysis capability to measure power-density, real, imaginary and magnitude FFT types that emulate the operation of a spectrum analyser.

A table shows the peak spectra and levels for easy review.

Parameter Math gives fast and accurate calculations in an oscilloscope: 750,000 measurements per second.

Parameters can be added, subtracted, multiplied or divided by any two standard or custom parameters.

Eight Math/Zoom functions provide chained math-on-math operations.

LeCroy integrates third-party programs into the oscilloscope's processing stream by allowing users to create and deploy a new measurement or math algorithm directly into the oscilloscope environment and display the result on the oscilloscope in real time.

Smart triggers are further enhanced with the ability to sequence Smart and Edge triggers in up to a three-trigger cascade arrangement to reduce the amount of time required to debug circuit and bus problems.

For instance, a user could set up the cascade to arm the trigger when a specified glitch is detected and then trigger when a specified slew rate condition was met or use the slew rate to further qualify and then trigger on a third Edge event.

A fast (200ps) glitch and width triggering capability, a selection of 12 different Smart triggers, exclusion triggering and the ability to link a Wavescan search condition with the cascaded triggering sequence makes for a powerful rare-event isolator.

This capability is standard in the Wavemaster 8 Zi Series.

Combined with a high sample rate of 40GS/s on all four channels and 80GS/s interleaved (optional on some models), a long record length (10Mpt per channel standard and up to 256Mpt per channel with 512Mpt interleaved at 80GS/s) and a variety of probes, options and accessories, the Wavemaster 8 Zi offers a complete system debug solution.

Debugging circuits require multiple modes of triggering.

In addition to a greater than 15GHz edge trigger, the cascade trigger feature, 12 different Smart triggers, less than 200ps pulse width and glitch triggering and exclusion triggering, a 3.125Gb/s 80-bit high-speed serial pattern trigger and low-speed serial triggers (I2C, SPI, UART-RS232, CAN, LIN and Flexray) are available.

The dual inputs offer the ability to use a range of probes of any oscilloscope, without requiring external adapters or power supplies.

The Wavemaster 8 Zi features a mixed-signal oscilloscope (MSO) option (four analogue and 36 digital channels).

In addition, Triggerscan and Wavescan, special modes for finding rare events and correlating the cause of the problem, shorten the time to debug a new design.

The complete LeCroy toolbox can be extended to the integrated second display in order to expand the oscilloscope's workspace and effectiveness.

The standard 15.3in display provides 50 per cent more area to view acquisitions and analysis, compared to a 12.4in display.

With the addition of the integrated second display, the viewing area triples.

The integrated second display is identical to the main display and is aligned and attached above the main display.

The oscilloscope grid may be split by the user between the two displays.

Waveform acquisitions, math traces or memory (reference) traces could be moved and viewed in either location.

The two displays provide a better vertical viewing capability than one, so waveform anomalies are easier to find.

Furthermore, the second display provides more area for waveform analysis so that deep insight of complex problems can be quickly accomplished.

The second display may also be used more conventionally to simultaneously run and view third-party programs, such as Matlab, or to view onscreen Help or the advanced LeCroy processing web.

Triggerscan uses high-speed hardware to detect undesired behaviours and then captures and displays them in a persistence mode for the additional analysis of glitches, runts and timing anomalies.

A built-in trainer identifies normal signal behaviour and then constructs a large set of rare-event trigger setups that target abnormal behaviour.

LeCroy provides a range of high-bandwidth probes and differential amplifiers from 11GHz to 18GHz of bandwidth, most available with browser or solder-in tips.

Since the Wavemaster 8 Zi is equipped with a Probus interface, a range of general-purpose current probes, active-voltage probes, high-voltage probes and passive probes and accessories are also available for use without requiring additional adapters, amplifiers or power supplies.

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