Product Update
-- Test & Measurement World, 3/1/2010 12:00:00 AM
Test PCIe 3.0 through the layers
PCI Express 3.0 doubles data throughput over PCIe 2.0 (8 Gbps compared to 4 Gbps) while maintaining compatibility back to PCIe 1.0. The U4301A PCIe 3.0 Digital Test Console from Agilent Technologies lets you test bus signals at the physical layer through the transaction layer on 1-, 2-, 4-, 8-, and 16-lane configurations.
The Test Console lets you measure jitter and analyze bus transactions. At the physical layer, it lets you add impairments for receiver testing. At the data link and transaction protocol layers, the Test Console decodes the new encoding schemes that let the bus increase throughput. The U4301A also generates traffic, and it supports LTSSM (Link Training and Status State Machine) testing.
At such high data rates, probes can affect measurements, and the signal at a receiver can look like noise rather than a clean eye. To compensate for those problems, the Test Console uses its equalization snoop probe. The probe’s tunable equalization can open the eye for the instrument to analyze the signals.
Base price: $75,000. Agilent Technologies, www.agilent.com.
Expand your oscilloscope’s bandwidth
Gigamax Technologies, a new company formed by former Wavecrest employees, has introduced the Scopemax, a tool for capturing and analyzing serial data streams that are too fast for some oscilloscopes. The Scopemax is a front-end signal processor that has a 12.5-GHz bandwidth. It produces a lower-speed copy of a signal that you can then view on any real-time oscilloscope that can sample at 10 Gsamples/s or higher on three channels. In addition to making a copy of a signal, the Scopemax measures time based on a software reference clock or “golden” PLL. Thus, it measures the time between edges of a data stream.
You connect the outputs of the Scopemax to the probe inputs of your oscilloscope, which can use a USB connection to control the tool. The Scopemax includes software for Agilent Technologies, LeCroy, and Tektronix oscilloscopes that analyzes signals. You don’t need additional software such as jitter-analysis packages, but you will need to add probes with enough bandwidth for your measurements. The Scopemax has a power connector for Agilent InfiniiMax probes.
Price: $29,900. Gigamax Technologies, www.gigamaxtech.com.
OTA emulator supports MIMO mobile terminals
EB Elektrobit has announced the EB Propsim F8 MIMO OTA emulator, which the company says is the industry’s first commercially available MIMO OTA (over-the-air) emulator that supports the increased performance and data rates of MIMO mobile terminals. Janne Kolu, director of product management for wireless communications tools, said the company has delivered a custom implementation for LG Electronics and is now making a commercial version available for other mobile terminal vendors as well as to wireless operators.
With the emulator, EB’s customers can benchmark the performance of mobile devices for quality of service, data throughput, latency, and spectrum availability to select the best devices needed to address the growing adoption of higher data-rate applications such as downloading graphics, playing games, and watching video.
Traditionally, OTA testing focused on single-input-single-output devices by only measuring power and antenna efficiency. With MIMO OTA testing, EB’s customers can assess the true performance of a terminal as a whole. It allows them to evaluate different designs in a fully repeatable and realistic wireless network environment so they can test all critical parts of the mobile terminal design at once, including antennas, RF front end, and baseband processing—eliminating the need for cables and test connectors and leaving the mobile device intact, which provides more accurate results of how the device will perform in a real-world environment.
The EB Propsim F8 MIMO OTA emulator is designed to meet the conformance-testing requirements of WCDMA, HSPA, 3GPP LTE, WiMAX, and WLAN.
Elektrobit, www.elektrobit.com.
Agilent LTE applications target 4G system-level designers
Agilent Technologies has introduced a new line of system-level design and verification products for 3GPP LTE physical-layer design. In addition to its traditional test and measurement products, Agilent now provides predictive products and algorithmic references for the SystemVue platform that are consistent with the LTE v.8.9.0 (December 2009) standard.
The new SystemVue platform products include:
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W1715 MIMO Channel Builder, a simulation block set for LTE architecture and receiver designers, based on the WINNER and WINNER-II fading algorithms. By incorporating non-ideal MIMO antenna performance (for example, crosstalk and directionality), the W1715 enables 2-D far-field data to be imported from antenna measurements or 3-D electromagnetic simulations. Realistic antenna degradations allow accurate assessments of link-level LTE architectures and receiver algorithms to be made at an early stage, before prototypes have been committed for the mechanical, RF/antenna, or baseband/DSP designs. Previously, according to Agilent, interactions between these domains required a fully operational hardware radio and came later in the design process, possibly during drive test. The W1715 brings some of this drive-test realism into the algorithm phase of the design.
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W1716 Digital Pre-Distortion (DPD) software, which helps LTE system integrators, RF component designers, and baseband architects transition from 3G to 4G by creating baseband signal-processing networks that improve the range of analog power amplifiers and transceiver ICs, improve efficiency, and extend battery life. The W1716 also assesses the suitability of existing 3G designs for 4G applications.
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W1910/2 LTE Baseband Verification Library reference block set, which supports LTE v.8.9.0. This update to the company’s W1910 verification library includes expanded PRACH and HARQ support. The HARQ simulation support uses a data-flow simulation mode that allows the symbol rate to change dynamically over the course of the simulation while retaining the timing and carrier information necessary for full RF effects, frequency-dependent phase noise, and channel fading.
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W1912 LTE Baseband Exploration Library, an updated C++ source-code version of the W1910. The W1912 allows deeper algorithmic insights, control, line-by-line software debugging, and precise test-vector generation from inside the algorithms of a working LTE v.8.9.0 physical layer.
Base price: approximately $17,000; a free 30-day evaluation is available. Agilent Technologies, www.agilent.com.
Dalsa adds color processing to vision camera
A color version of the BOA vision system is now available from Dalsa. You can use the BOA smart camera for a broad range of color-inspection applications, such as identification of parts or assembly features, sorting, counting, and verification of color hue. Its color tools can be combined with standard measurement or identification tools to perform complete inspection of parts and assemblies. The iNspect Express software interface allows you to quickly prototype and deploy applications, and it is available with a full-featured emulator for offline application development and debugging.
Combining all the elements of an industrial machine-vision system in a tiny camera-style package, the BOA’s 44-mm cube form factor fits tight setups, while its IP67-rated housing means the camera can be deployed in harsh, wash-down environments. The BOA camera is outfitted with a 1/3-in. monochrome or color VGA (640x480-pixel) CCD sensor operating at up to 60 images/s.
Dalsa, www.dalsa.com.
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