Tektronix tackles test challenges of digital age

Beaverton, OR. Tektronix has geared up to address test challenges posed by video systems, high-speed serial data links, embedded systems, and RF applications, according to marketing managers interviewed at the company’s headquarters Tuesday. According to senior marketing manager Chris Loberg, Tektronix is aligned to address these four areas and to help customers solve the problems that occur with introduction of high-speed digital circuitry in myriad products—ranging from consumer devices to military systems. The managers did not focus on specific products but did demonstrate that they have thoroughly investigated and are able to address the issues involved.

Technical marketing manager Darren McCarthy commented on RF applications. The trends he sees there include improved spectrum utilization and the greening of wireless. With respect to bandwidth, he said, “Fifteen years ago, no one would have imagined that a half-watt handheld transmitter could interfere with the radar signal of a plane that’s trying to land,” and he suggested that such a situation is increasingly likely as the spectrum becomes more crowded. And demand for spectrum will continue to grow. McCarthy cited drone-mounted synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging systems as one example—the higher the bandwidth available, he said, the better images such systems return. He cited as an example of SAR use the search for survivors of Hurricane Ike over Galveston in September 2008.

He pointed out that the move toward broadcast digital TV will free up spectrum space, but effective spectrum utilization, he said, will require knowledge of potential interference. Such knowledge will be mandatory for cognitive radios, he said, which will need to work around devices having priority to certain frequency bands. And the prevalence of software in radios, he said, presents its own problems—an operating system, for example, can just freeze up.

With respect to the greening of communications, he said he’s not talking about edible phones but rather low-power infrastructure that can serve the coming wave of cell-phone users who live on less that $2 per day. Building energy-efficient infrastructure, he said, will require exact measurements of the linear and nonlinear performance of power amplifiers and other components. And the measurements will have to be made at the power levels and impedances that matter—not the ideal 50-ohm environment found in labs. Tektronix wideband signal generators and oscilloscopes, he said, can make such measurements in the time domain, and he added that Tektronix is working with a third party* to implement the appropriate algorithms. (He didn’t name the third party, but NMDG is one company working in that area.)

High-speed serial data

Randy White, technical marketing manager, drilled down on the high-speed serial-data topic, highlighting equalization and de-embedding. Addressing equalization, he said that silicon is cheap. In contrast, the implementation of controlled-impedance printed-circuit-board traces and cables while controlling cross-talk and other signal-integrity-degrading effects is not. Consequently, White said, designers build equalization capability (such as pre-emphasis) into their transmit and receive chips to compensate for the signal degradation that will inevitably occur as the signal propagates along high-speed serial links.

As for de-embedding, White noted that the test of many dense products requires that measurements be made at inaccessible points—at a pin under a package, for example. Since the point of interest can’t be directly reached, he said, the measurement must be made at some remove—at a test fixture connected to a printed-circuit-board trace that in turn is connected to the point of interest. An accurate measurement under such circumstances, he said, requires that the effects of the trace and fixture be removed—or de-embedded—from the measured result. With respect to both equalization and de-embedding, White said, Tektronix has focused on developing test products that enable designers to pass their designs on to manufacturing with sufficient margin to ensure high yields.

Embedded systems

Gina Bonini, technical marketing manager, addressed embedded systems. A key trend, she said, is the sheer amount of capability crammed into even low-cost consumer products. A $30 children’s educational toy, she said, would have a microprocessor, an ADC, a power supply, memory, and a serial bus. With regard to that last point, 60% of oscilloscope users, Bonini said, work with serial buses (while 50% work with parallel buses).

Another trend in the embedded space, Bonini said, is the push for power efficiency. That, she added, is driving a move from linear power supplies toward switching power supplies. That move, she said, is driving a need for instruments that can perform power-quality analysis. To serve the embedded space, she noted, Tektronix offers a line of instruments, such as a $2500 scope introduced in November that can decode serial bus data.

Video

Jon Hammarstrom, senior marketing manager, addressed video. Tek’s video business, he explined, began in the 1950s, when the company tailored an oscilloscope for video applications. Since then, he said, Tek’s focus has been to adapt other Tektronix instruments for the video industry.

Video has changed drastically from the ‘50s, he said. Back then, transmission was in real time: “You had a black-and-white picture with any post-processing done instantly. You know exactly where Lawrence Welk was standing and where the camera was located.” And the signal came to viewers from a studio network in analog and RF formats.

The business has changed drastically, he pointed out. Today, you see the involvement of content providers, post-production people, content delivery businesses, and others. Video content itself comes in a variety formats, including high-definition video. He identified H.264 compression as a disruptive technology.

He noted that today, video may come to you over the airwaves or down two DSL copper wires from your phone company. Further, content aggregators are emerging, and the content providers are changing. Microsoft, he said, is now a major contend provider. The changes, he said, are driven by “consumers’ expectations that they can see what they want to see when they want to see it.”

With respect to test, Hammarstrom said, Tektronix is keeping up with emerging standards and offering tools that can help all the players in the complex video industry. The goal is to find in which layer a problem exists so it can be fixed. “We want to make our customers smarter,” he concluded.

*Update: The third-party is Mesuro Limited; see related post.