High-bandwidth oscilloscope takes the prize

2007 AWARDS: Test Engineer of the Year Test Product of the Year Test of Time Overview of Awards Program READ OTHER MARCH ARTICLES:  Contents, March 2007

Eight models cover the range of 2 GHz to 13 GHz. Why so many options? “Capital budgets are tight these days,” said product manager Lon Hintze. “It takes almost an act of Congress to get approval for new test equipment. So, we wanted to give engineers the option of buying just enough scope for today's jobs without forcing them to buy a new scope next year.”

Test & Measurement World ’s readers have selected the Agilent 80000B oscilloscope as the Test Product of the Year. Courtesy of Agilent Technologies.

Beyond analyzing serial buses, engineers also use the 80000B scopes for aerospace, defense, and RF applications. The scopes are fast enough to directly digitize an RF carrier—no downconverter required. They can also measure laser pulses, neutrino emissions, and electrostatic discharge and electromagnetic interference.

Engineers have already taken advantage of the 80000B bandwidth upgrade since it was introduced in February 2006. “The first came about six months after introduction,” said Hintze.

Of course, the wider a scope's bandwidth, the wider a range of noise it can capture. “If you 2X bandwidth, you 2X noise,” said Agilent R&D project manager Mike Karin. “We needed a new approach to reduce noise.” That approach resulted in an RF package that has built-in Faraday shields around the scope's sensitive analog pre-amp and trigger circuits. Agilent engineers created “RFI chambers” to suppress external noise. A new SiGe buffer amplifier, developed for the 12-GHz and 13-GHz models, also lowers noise over those used in previous scopes.

Engineers at Agilent’s Colorado Springs facility designed the 80000B oscilloscope line. Courtesy of Agilent Technologies.

The Agilent engineers in Colorado Springs also developed a new probe tip topology that raised the bandwidth of the probe tips to 13 GHz, and they designed a new SiGe probe amplifier for the 13-GHz probes. In addition, they developed and built the thick-film substrate used to hold the probe's amplifier close to the measurement point.

What has drawn engineers to the 80000B line? Hintze points to three factors: signal integrity, because of the scope's low noise floor; probing, because of the digital signal processing (DSP) compensation that results in flat frequency response; and a wide variety of application packages including 12 compliance packages for serial buses and jitter analysis.