Digital scope turns to FlexRay analysis

A self-contained tool provides physical-layer waveform observation and protocol analysis for the fast, highly reliable FlexRay in-vehicle local area network.

The new Yokogawa FlexRay signal analyser is the world's first self-contained tool for providing physical-layer waveform observation and protocol analysis for the fast, highly reliable FlexRay in-vehicle local area network.

Based on the company's high-performance DL7400 Series of digital oscilloscopes, the new analyser allows the user to capture FlexRay bus signals with a wide variety of dedicated triggers and carry out analysis and troubleshooting on parameters such as surge voltage, noise, level fluctuations and other sources of error.

Once the signals are captured, the waveforms are displayed along with a frame containing a list of analysis results, and the user can also zoom in on any of the frame waveforms.

The instrument's 8Mword of internal memory allows continuous bus waveforms of up to 80ms to be captured at a 100Msample/s sampling rate prior to analysis.

As the frame waveform at the cursor in the list is automatically displayed, the user can observe the bus signals simultaneously with the analysis results.

As a result, it is easy to determine what effects noise and level fluctuations have on communications data.

A number of powerful auxiliary functions are available to support analysis, and the analysis results can be saved to a file in text format.

The appropriate FlexRay bus signal can be captured by specifying the trigger bit conditions, including frame start, payload preamble, null frame, sync frame, startup frame indicators, frame ID, cycle count, payload data frame or combinations of these.

Triggers can also be activated on combinations of the FlexRay bus signal bit conditions and other analogue signals, or CRC error on the FlexRay bus.

This combination of features means that the FlexRay signal analyser can meet virtually all the measurement and analysis requirements encountered in FlexRay systems.

It can observe long durations of bus data and confirm changes in timing and period; confirm whether the FlexRay chip is working properly; check whether specific frames are being sent; and look for glitches and other phenomena in the bus signal.

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