Test-equipment powerhouse Agilent Technologies Inc., Palo Alto CA, says it has engineered the industry's lowest-noise oscilloscope and the industry's only bandwidth-upgradeable scope product line.
Infiniium 80000B 2-through-13GHz real-time scopes provide superior signal integrity and probing, redefining signal integrity performance and investment protection for multi-gigahertz-bandwidth oscilloscopes, the company says.

Superior signal integrity comes through the unit's RF design, proprietary packaging technologies and CMOS ADC architecture. This is expressed through the extremely low noise floor of the scopes.

According to the manufacturer, the higher the bandwidth of an oscilloscope, the more subject it is to increased intrinsic noise. Higher levels of intrinsic noise will degrade every measurement the device makes.

The unit that makes the best measurement will not be the one with the higher bandwidth but the one with sufficient bandwidth that has the lowest intrinsic noise floor.

Each model of new line provides the industry's lowest noise floor at its particular bandwidth, Agilent says, along with the industry's lowest jitter measurement floor, lowest trigger jitter, and flattest frequency response.

The ultra-high-speed digital electronics market and related RF electronics market are rapidly changing, the firm says. Signal rates of popular industry standards range from a few hundred megahertz to multi-gigahertz, such as USB 2.0 at 480, PCI Express at 2.5, and fully buffered DIMM (FBD) at 4.8 gigabits per second (Gbps).

Rise-times of each key standard range from a few hundred picoseconds to faster than 50 picoseconds.

Bandwidth upgradeability within the 80000B line allows engineers to select the appropriate bandwidth needed for their particular application today, then upgrade performance as the next project moves on to more advanced technology.

"Agilent not only delivers industry-leading oscilloscope performance, but also uses its extensive technology base to provide superior signal integrity and probing and analysis software for the designer's specific application," David Churchill, Agilent vice president and general manager, Design Validation Division, says. "In addition, Agilent is redefining the investment paradigm for multi-gigahertz oscilloscopes by offering the industry's only bandwidth-upgradeable series of oscilloscopes."

The scopes also add touch-screen, XGA resolution display, front-panel USB port, and higher-performance CPU system for faster display and measurement execution.

MegaZoom always-active technology provides 256 levels of intensity grading to clearly identify waveform anomalies that were previously invisible with earlier-model oscilloscopes.

Application software includes 23 packages targeted at engineers designing high-speed serial buses, RF and wireless products, and other ultra-high-speed electronics. Included are InfiniiScan event identification software, second-generation jitter analysis, serial data analysis with 8b/10b decoding, and compliance test packages for standards such as USB 2.0, PCI Express, Ethernet, DVI, HDMI, Fibre Channel, FBD, DDR and SATA, and SAS.