The PicoScope 9200A oscilloscopes uses sequential sampling technology to measure fast repetitive signals without the need for expensive real-time sampling hardware. Combined with an input bandwidth of 12 GHz, this enables acquisition of signals with rise times of 50 ps or even faster. Precise timebase stability and accuracy, and a resolution of 200 fs, allow characterization of jitter in the most demanding applications.

The PicoScope 9200A scopes have a built-in high-frequency trigger with frequency divider. Its typical bandwidth of up to 10 GHz allows measurements of microwave components with extremely fast data rates.
 

The scopes are equipped with a built-in direct trigger for signals up to 1 GHz repetition rate without using additional trigger units.

The PicoScope 9211A, 9221A and 9231A can internally generate a pattern sync trigger derived from bit rate, pattern length, and trigger divide ratio. This enables it to build up an eye pattern from any specified bit or group of bits in a sequence.

Eye line mode works with the pattern sync trigger to isolate any one of the 8 possible paths, called eye lines, that the signal can make through the eye diagram. This allows the instrument to display averaged eye diagrams showing a specified eye line.

The PicoScope 9221A and 9231A have a built-in 8 GHz optical electrical converter. This allows analysis of optical signals such as SONET/SDH OC1 to OC48, Fibre Channel FC133 to FC4250, and G.984.2. The converter input accepts both single-mode (SM) and multimode (MM) fibers and has a wavelength range of 750 to 1650 nm.

A selection of Bessel-Thomson filters can be purchased separately for use with specific optical standards.

The PicoScope 9211A and 9231A TDR/TDT Oscilloscopes are specially designed for time-domain reflectometry (TDR) and time-domain transmissometry (TDT). It provides a low-cost method of testing cables, connectors, circuit boards and IC packages for unwanted reflections and losses.

The PicoScope 9211A and 9231A work by launching pulses into the device under test using programmable, 100 ps rise-time step generators. They then use their 12 GHz sampling inputs to build up a picture from a sequence of reflected or transmitted pulses. The results can be displayed as volts, ohms or rho against time or distance.

The scope can generate industry-standard or custom signals including clock, pulse and pseudo-random binary sequence. These can be used to test the instrument's inputs, experiment with its features and verify complex set-ups such as mask tests.

The PicoScope 9000 software molds to your application by presenting only the feature controls that you need. Select the control panels you need with a single left or right click on the controls bar at the bottom of the display.

Choose to specify timebase offset numerically, or use the traditional dual timebase "Delay", "A", "A intensified by B" and "B" controls, or click, drag and zoom, which ever you find more natural.

Display your waveforms on a single, dual or quad graticule; persisted, colour or intensity graduated, vectored or not.

The PicoScope 9200A scopes quickly measure over 40 pulse parameters, so you don’t need to count graticules or estimate the waveform’s position.

Up to ten simultaneous measurements or four statistics measurements are possible. The measurements conform to the IEEE standards.

The PicoScope 9000 Series supports up to four simultaneous mathematical combinations and functional transformation of acquired waveforms. You can select any of the mathematical functions as a math operator to act on the operand or operands.

Single-input operators: Invert, Absolute, Exponent, Logarithm, Differentiate, Integrate, Inverse, FFT, Interpolation, Smoothing.

Two-input operators: Add, Subtract, Multiply, and Divide.

A histogram is a probability distribution that shows the distribution of acquired data from a source within a user-definable histogram window. The information gathered by the histogram is used to perform statistical analysis on the source.

Histograms can be constructed on waveforms on either the vertical or horizontal axes. The most common use for a vertical histogram is measuring and characterizing noise on displayed waveforms, while the most common use for a horizontal histogram is measuring and characterizing jitter on displayed waveforms.

The PicoScope 9200 Series quickly measures more than 30 fundamental parameters used to characterize non-return-to-zero (NRZ) and return-to-zero (RZ) signals. Up to four parameters can be measured simultaneously.

The PicoScope 9211A, 9221A and 9231A also include a 10 Gbps software pattern sync trigger for averaging eye diagrams.

For eye-diagram masks, such as those specified by the SONET and SDH standards, the PicoScope 9200 Series supports on-board mask drawing for visual comparison. The display can be grey-scaled or colour-graded to aid in analyzing noise and jitter in eye diagrams. Over 150 industry-standard masks are included.

All PicoScope 9200 Series oscilloscopes can perform up to two Fast Fourier Transforms of input signals using a range of windowing functions. FFTs are useful for finding crosstalk problems, finding distortion problems in analog waveforms caused by nonlinear amplifiers, adjusting filter circuits designed to filter out certain harmonics in a waveform, testing impulse responses of systems, and identifying and locating noise and interference sources.

The PicoScope 9000 software can be operated as a standalone oscilloscope program and as an ActiveX control. The ActiveX control conforms to the Windows COM model and can be embedded in your own software. Programming examples are provided in Visual Basic (VB.NET), LabVIEW and Delphi, but any programming language or standard that supports the COM standard can be used, including JavaScript and C.

A comprehensive Programmer’s Guide is supplied that details every function of the ActiveX control.

The SDK can control the oscilloscope over the USB port or the LAN port.