Product Update

Testing LEDs for a new prototype used to mean building your own tester with a power supply or battery and a resistor. You can still do that, or you can use the TestLED, a 9-V battery-powered LED tester. The tester has 11 ports for LEDs. Three ports provide 20 mA, four provide 10 mA, and one port each provides 2 mA, 5 mA, 30 mA, and 50 mA for two-lead LEDS. For three-lead devices, you can use one of three ports, each configured for a different anode-cathode combination. Price: $39.95. LEDtronics, Torrance, CA. 310-534-1505; www.ledtronics.com.

Equipment rooms often require the monitoring of temperature and humidity. When you need to log that data, the Micro Humidity Logging Thermometer, powered by a 3.6-V lithium battery, can store up to 16,000 temperature and humidity measurements with time stamps. The internal temperature sensor operates from 0°C to 165°C. Humidity measurements operate from 0% to 95%. A Windows-based software package lets you configure the logger and download data. Price: $199. Telatemp, Fullerton, CA. 714-879-2901. www.telatemp.com.

The 3410 Series signal generators operate from 250 kHz to 2 GHz, 3 GHz, and 4 GHz. The instruments pack digital, vector, and analog modulation capabilities in a 2U rack size (107x419x510 mm) and offer RF level accuracy of ±0.5 dB. They include IEEE 488 and USB 1.1 interfaces and can switch carrier frequencies and RF levels in less than 5 ms.

The 3410 series includes a touch-screen user interface that enables selection of more than 30 different modulation combinations and output signal levels and frequencies with minimal effort. Equivalent hard keys and rotary knob complement each touch control.

Using external IQ inputs, a 3410 instrument provides an RF modulation bandwidth of up to 100 MHz. Adjacent Channel Power (ACP) performance is typically better than -68 dBc for a 3GPP (Third-generation Partnership Protocol) FDD (Frequency Division Duplex) signal. An optional dual-channel arbitrary waveform generator enables digitally modulated carriers with an RF modulation bandwidth of 45 MHz. Wide-bandwidth FM and AM come standard, allowing the instrument to be used for applications such as jitter tolerance assessment in telecommunications systems.

The 3410 series ARB is capable of storing a maximum of 22.5 Msamples, which can be allocated among as many as 180 files. The instruments come with IQCreator, a software package that aids in the creation and downloading of files to the ARB.

Base price: $16,800. Delivery: six to eight weeks. IFR, Wichita, KS. 800-835-2352; www.ifrsys.com .

LeCroy enters the high-end market for optical and electrical communication signal analysis with the 6-GHz SDA 6000, the 5-GHz SDA 5000, and th e 3-GHz SDA 3000 serial data analyzers. These instruments compete with Tek's communications signal analyzers and Agilent's data communications analyzers. The SDA models are essentially WaveMaster DSOs with test and analysis functions specifically designed for serial data streams.

You can use the SDA models to measure SONET/SDH signals as well as signals on the USB, IEEE 1394, and Gigabit Ethernet buses. For the optical SONET/SDH signals, you can perform measurements at speeds up to OC-48 bit rates (2.5 Gbits/s).

You can use the SDA units to measure jitter, bit-error rate (BER), and signal-to-noise ratio, and also perform eye-pattern analysis on signals up to 3.5 Gbits/s (SDA 6000), 2.5 Gbits/s (SDA 5000), and 1.25 Gbits/s (SDA 3000). When performing jitter measurements with any SDA model, you can separate random jitter from deterministic jitter. The instrument will also tell you the amount of jitter caused by intersymbol interference and can estimate BER from jitter measurements. You can use an external clock source, or the instrument can extract a clock from a data stream. A BER locator uses math to analyze bit streams to find errors.

The SDAs have an optional optical reference receiver, which lets you run four 4-GHz optical channels on one instrument. A four-pole Bessel-Thompson filter, implemented by a digital signal processor, lets you operate the optional optical-to-electrical (O/E) converters. With the instrument's 8-Msample/channel memory, you can capture up to 2²³ bits of data.

Prices: SDA 6000—$67,990; SDA 5000—$59,990; SDA 3000—$47,990; O/E converters—$5490; reference receiver—$950. LeCroy, Chestnut Ridge, NY. 800-453-2769; www.lecroy.com .

Two sampling modules for the Tektronix CSA8000B communications signal analyzer extend the instrument's measuring capabilities into the realm of 40-Gbits/s RZ and NRZ signals. The first module (80C10), called an optical reference receiver, provides a predictable and normalized response that makes it possible to run production tests on high-speed fiber-optic equipment. In addition to meeting the OC-768/STM-256 (39.018 Gbits/s) standards, the single-channel module also supports the ITU-T G.709 forward error-correction (FEC) standard. You can use the module over the entire range of wavelengths from 1310 nm to 1550 nm, but it offers calibrated response at only at 1310-nm and 1550-nm wavelengths (±20 nm). Applications for the 80C10 module include extinction-ratio measurements, optical signal analysis, and conformance testing for RZ pulses.

The second module, 80E06, operates with better than a 70-GHz electrical bandwidth, which makes it an excellent choice for characterizing high-speed electrical signals used in communication systems. You can use this module if you work at the 40-Gbits/s data rates now in use in fiber-optic communication systems. The electrical input can handle signals with a 1.0 V_p-p dynamic range, and the input's sensitivity goes down as far as 10 mV.

Base prices: 80C10—$65,000; 80E06—$22,000. Delivery: four to six weeks. Tektronix, Beaverton, OR. 800-426-2200, code 1279. www.tektronix.com.

Agilent Technologies' new E8361A vector network analyzer (VNA), a member of the company's PNA family, extends that family's frequency performance to 67 GHz. The company also introduced a new frequency-offset measurement capability for the PNA instruments. At the same time, the company introduced the E8267C, a member of its PSG series that provides vector modulation to 20 GHz.

The E8361A VNA targets broadband wireless access and 40-Gbit/s optical communications. It features less than 0.03 dB of trace noise at a 1-kHz IF bandwidth and greater than 90 dB of dynamic range at a 65-GHz bandwidth, and it takes measurements in less than 26 µs/point. The frequency-offset option, used to characterize devices such as mixers, includes hardware and firmware that automates measurement of intermodulation and harmonic distortion and mixer conversion loss, providing vector-corrected and match-corrected absolute power measurements. A new ECal electronic-calibration module adds a USB interface as well as support for 2.92-, 2.4-, and 1.85-mm connectors.

The E8267C signal generator provides wideband vector modulation to 20 GHz and accommodates an optional internal baseband generator with 80 MHz of modulation bandwidth and 32 Msamples of baseband memory. It accepts external I/Q inputs with 160 MHz of modulation bandwidth, has 6 Gbytes of nonvolatile storage, and it works with the company's Pulse Builder Signal Studio software, a radar-emitter test-pattern generator. The free PSG/ESG Download Assistant software lets PSG instruments use waveforms created within Matlab (The MathWorks, Natick, MA; www.mathworks.com).

Base prices: E8361A—$139,000; frequency-offset measurement option—$19,500; E8267C—$65,100. Agilent Technologies, Santa Clara, CA. 800-452-4844, ext. 7757 (for PNA instruments) or ext. 7747 (for PSG signal generators); www.agilent.com/find/PNA or www.agilent.com/find/PSG .

Conducted emissions often contain a combination of differential-mode emissions and common-mode emissions. While EMI emissions standards specify the total amount of conducted emissions that a product can impose on its AC mains, they don't differentiate between the two types. Yet, knowing which type of emission dominates the total can help you troubleshoot your product and can help you select the proper AC mains filter for your product.

The ESA-2000 EMC analyzer lets you distinguish between differential-mode and common-mode conducted emissions in AC mains, and it can analyze radiated emissions, too. It covers a bandwidth of 10 kHz to 30 MHz for conducted emissions and 30 MHz to 1.1 GHz f or radiated emissions. Its IF bandwidth complies with those for compliance tests (9 kHz for conducted emissions and 120 kHz for radiated emissions). It also contains peak, quasi-peak, and average detectors for emissions analysis.

The EMS 2000 requires an external PC running Windows. It communicates with the PC through a standard serial port. Price: £9000 (about $14,000). Laplace Instruments, Cromer, Norfolk, UK. +44-(0)-1263-5151-60; www.laplace.co.uk .

The Validator 500 is a laptop-sized $60,000 test system that engineers can employ to validate design-for-test (DFT) structures in prototype chips and to rapidly test engineering samples. Validator 500 comes with its vendor's DFT-Intelligent software, which imports automatically generated test patterns in the IEEE 1450 Standard Test Interface Language (STIL) format. The software also imports detailed information about embedded DFT structures, enabling the Validator 500 to provide data views that link design and test information. The system can handle devices that have more than 100 scan chains, and it accommodates 32 million pattern vectors. It supports multiple clock domains at rates to 50 MHz. It provides 256 DFT pins, eight clock pins, and eight scan-enable pins. Pulse placement resolution is 250 ps; clock edge-to-edge accuracy is w1 ns. The system connects to a Windows host workstation via an Ethernet interface.

Available in December. Teseda, Portland, OR. 503-223-3315; www.teseda.com .

The original WinWedge Pro software made it easy to capture data from RS-232 devices and place that data in Excel spreadsheets, statistics programs, and other applications. New modules in the latest version of the software let you work with data in the TCP/IP format and with TCP/IP ports. The TCP-Wedge module, for example, sends data to and from TCP/IP ports and Windows applications. You can use the same data-parsing and data-filtering operations on this data as you could in previous versions of WinWedge.

A separate File-Wedge module feeds ASCII data to any Windows application and lets you preprocess your data to filter or format it. Three additional modules convert RS-232 data to and from the TCP/IP format, log TCP/IP data to a file, and log RS-232 data to a file. The WinWedge software comes with free, unlimited technical support and a 90-day, money-back guarantee.

Price: $495. TALtech, Philadelphia, PA. 800-722-6004; www.taltech.com.

When you purchase a copy of the WiT visual-programming software, Coreco Imaging will add one of its PCVisionplus frame grabbers—list price $1250—for free. The combined package provides an inexpensive way to get involved in machine vision or automated optical inspection. This special offer lasts through the end of December 2002.

The WiT software provides drag-and-drop icons that represent image-acquisition, image-analysis, and control functions. You can connect the building blocks to produce applications that take images from a camera and deliver useful results. If you want to move beyond the basic blocks, you can connect functions using Visual Basic or a C/C++ compiler. WiT can also convert an icon-based application into C code.

The PCVisionplus frame grabber digitizes monochrome analog video signals with a resolution of 8 or 12 bits and samples video signals at up to 53 Msamples/s. The card plugs into a PCI slot and can operate over the host PC's bus at 133 Mbytes/s.

Price: $3900. Coreco Imaging, St. Laurent, QC, Canada. 514-333-1301; www.imaging.com/wit.