Scopes combine big displays, small footprint
By Dan Strassberg -- EDN, January 19, 2006
With its WaveRunner Xi line, LeCroy brings big-scope performance and a 10.4-in. touch-sensitive display to a package whose benchtop footprint is no larger than that of scopes that offer much lower performance. What's more, the units achieve this goal at base prices of $7500 to $11,000. Like the lower cost WaveSurfer, WaveRunner Xi scopes measure only 6 in. deep. Whereas the footprint is one-third to one-half that of most other instruments in this class, the display is 1.5 and 2.5 times that of 8.4- and 6.4-in. screens, respectively.
The scopes offer sampling rates as high as 10G samples/sec on the 600-MHz unit with pairs of channels interleaved and have standard 2M-point/channel memory; as many as 24M points/channel interleaved are optional. The high sampling rates, providing at least 10× oversampling, result in excellent signal fidelity on fast edges and high-frequency signals and ensure accurate timing measurements when all channels are active. These sampling rates exceed those of most higher priced competitive scopes having bandwidths of 1 or 1.5 GHz. In addition, LeCroy offers the MS-32 mixed-signal option, which allows users to add to a four-channel WaveRunner Xi 32 digital logic-timing-analysis channels, each with 1M points/channel (32M points total). This feature expands the four-channel scope to four analog and 32 digital channels and significantly enhances mixed-signal and embedded-controller debugging.
The WaveStream fast-viewing mode provides brightness-graded intensity with a decay time similar to that of the phosphor on an analog screen. This mode operates to 10G samples/sec with update rates to 8000 waveforms/sec for improved capture of higher frequency abnormal events.
The WaveRunner Xi-series scopes are available in 400- and 600-MHz bandwidths. The 400-MHz unit comes with four channels, and the 600-MHz units are available with two or four channels. All models sample at 5G samples/sec on all channels simultaneously, and the 600-MHz model interleaves to 10G samples/sec. All models provide memory of 2M points/channel or 4M points/channel, interleaved, which equates to a 400-µsec capture time at the full sample rate. Memory as deep as 12M points/channel or 24M points/channel interleaved is optional.
LeCroy Corp, www.lecroy.com.
