62.8-GHz-bandwidth DSO has 75-fsec-rms jitter-noise floor

With two of its four channels active and the maximum 2G-sample/active channel acquisition-memory, Agilent's new Infiniium 96204Q real-time-sampling DSO takes 160G samples/sec on each active channel. At that sampling rate, it captures 12.5-msec-long records. The rms jitter-noise floor is 75 fsec. You can use the four-channel scopes as two-channel instruments to obtain maximum bandwidth and minimum rise time. Agilent allows you to combine four scopes into a system that accommodates 16 33-GHz channels or eight 62.8-GHz channels, but the waveforms, along with time-reference markers, appear on four separate LCDs, each of which measures more than 15 in. diagonally.

The ADCs in Agilent's Q series are basically the same massively oversampling all-silicon converters the company has used for years in its high-end Infiniium scopes. To reduce spurious frequency components in each channel's 8-bit output data stream, Agilent has tweaked the algorithms that combine the many converter outputs. A major obstacle to users' ability to take advantage of scope bandwidths greater than 30 GHz is the availability of probes. A quick check of the leading scope manufacturers' data sheets reveals no differential active probe with bandwidth greater than 30 GHz. Although you can make many ultra-high-frequency measurements through direct connection to low-impedance scope inputs, the absence of suitable probes can complicate the task and can force you to use pairs of channels to make differential measurements.

A key application for ultra-wideband scopes with large numbers of channels is measurements on multilane fiber-optic communication systems. Such measurements require optical-to-electrical converters. Expect scope manufacturers to soon offer multichannel versions of these converters as front-end devices for these ultra-wideband scopes. Prices for the Agilent 96204Q range from $191,000 to $419,000. Agilent has also introduced Infiniiview, a $750 PC-based software package that enables users to go offline and manipulate and analyze data that scopes capture online.

Agilent Technologies