Waveform analyzer plug-in smokes at 50 GHz/32 Gbps so engineers can stay cool

Santa Clara, CA—It's not easy doing leading-edge optical and electronic-communication system design: you need instrumentation that's better than the leading-edge performance you're trying to achieve, consistent, and confidence-inspiring.  The 86108B precision waveform analyzer module from Agilent for their 86100C/D DCA wide-bandwidth oscilloscope family targets engineers testing high-speed links such as IEEE 802.3ba (40/100 GB Ethernet); optical Internetworking Forum CEI 3.0, Fibre Channel INCITS T-11 32G, and others.

 

Front panel of the Agilent 86108B

Precision Waveform Analyzer plug-in module

for the 86100C/D DCA wide-bandwidth oscilloscope family

(click here to enlarge image).

 Its integrated precision timebase and clock-recover design yields typical residual jitter below 50 femtoseconds (rms) for the high-bandwidth option, while providing continuous data-rate coverage form 50 Mbps to 32 Gbps (along with peaking control and adjustable loop bandwidths to 20 MHz for enhanced PLL response).

The internal triggering architecture allows simple connection schemes (relatively speaking, of course), along with analysis of low-amplitude signals and elimination of clock-data delay that can corrupt jitter measurements. An internal phase detector supports accurate measurements of PLL bandwidth, jitter transfer, and jitter/phase noise spectrum.

 

A jitter measurement of a 14-GHz sine wave

shows the RJ component measured at 39 fsec (rms),

using the modules integrated clock-recovery and timebase functions

(click here to enlarge image).

The low-bandwidth option offers two channels with 35 GHz bandwidth, residual jitter below 60 fs/90 fs noise of 500 μV/700 μV (typical/guaranteed, respectively), internal clock recovery rates of 50 Mbps to 16 Gbps or 50 Mbps to 32 Gbps, depending on option. The high-bandwidth option instrument's bandwidth is 50 GHz, with jitter specifications of 50 fs/70 fs, noise of 800 μV/980 μV, (typical/guaranteed, respectively) and the same clock recovery rates as the low-bandwidth option.

Price and availability: Of course, such performance doesn’t come easy, nor cheap, but the challenges it solves are neither, as well. Prices start at $80,000 for the unit, which is available now.

For more information about the 86108B, go to http://www.agilent.com/find/86108B; for more on the 86100D DCA-X wideband oscilloscope family, go to http://www.aglient.com/find/dcax .