Pico 9404-05 - 5 GHz Sampler-Extended Real-Time Oscilloscope
- 5 GHz bandwidth, 70 ps transition time
- 1 TS/s (1 ps) equivalent-time sampling
- Four 12-bit 500 MS/s ADCs
- Pulse, eye and mask testing to 70 ps and 3 Gb/s
- Up to 2 million triggered captures per second
- Logical, configurable, touch-compatible Windows user interface
- Comprehensive built-in measurements, zooms, data masks and histograms
The PicoScope 9404 has four high-bandwidth 50 Ω input channels with market-leading ADC, timing and display resolutions for accurately measuring and visualizing high-speed analog and data signals. It is ideal for capturing pulse and step transitions to 70 ps, impulse down to 140 ps, clocks and data eyes to 3 Gb/s. Most high-bandwidth applications involve repetitive signals or clock-related data streams that can be readily analyzed by equivalent-time sampling (ETS).
The SXRTO is fast: ETS, persistence displays and statistics all build quickly, with fast acquisitions running at up to 2 million triggered captures per second.
The PicoScope 9404 has a built-in full-bandwidth trigger on every channel, with pretrigger ETS capture to well above the Nyquist sampling rate. The oscilloscope has 5 GHz bandwidth behind a 50 ohm SMA(f) input, and there are three acquisition modes-real time, ETS and roll-all capturing at 12-bit resolution into a shared memory of up to 250 kS. The PicoSample 4 software is derived from our existing PicoSample 3 and PicoScope 9000 products, which together embody over ten years of development, customer feedback and optimization.
The high-resolution display can be resized to fit any window, filling 4k and even larger or multiple monitors. Four independent zoom channels can show you different views of your data down to a resolution of 1 ps. Most of the controls and status panels can be shown or hidden according to your application, allowing you to make optimal use of the display area.
The oscilloscope has a 2.5 GHz direct trigger that can be driven from any input channel, and a built-in prescaler can extend the trigger bandwidth to 5 GHz. The price you pay for your PicoScope SXRTO is the price you pay for everything - we don'’'t charge you for software features or updates.
Typical applications
- Telecom and radar test, service and manufacturing
- Optical fiber, transceiver and laser testing (optical to electrical conversion not included)
- RF, microwave and gigabit digital system measurements
- Signal, eye, pulse and impulse characterization
- Precision timing and phase analysis
- Digital system design and characterization
- Eye diagram, mask and limits test to 3 Gb/s
- Ethernet, HDMI 1, PCI, SATA and USB 2.0
- Semiconductor characterization
- Signal, data and pulse/impulse integrity and pre-compliance testing
ETS (equivalent-time sampling)
PicoScope 9400 Series SXRTOs use equivalent-time sampling (ETS) to capture high-bandwidth repetitive or clock-derived signals without the expense or jitter of a very high-speed real-time oscilloscope. The 5 GHz bandwidth is matched by a guaranteed 70 ps rise time, better than some instruments with equal or even higher bandwidths. ETS mode enables timing resolution down to 1 ps, and can quickly build waveforms with up to 2 million triggers per second.
Trigger modes
Simply feed your signal into one of the input channels
The oscilloscope has a 2.5 GHz direct trigger that can be driven from any input channel, and a built-in prescaler can extend the trigger bandwidth to 5 GHz.
Frequency counter
A dedicated frequency counter shows signal frequency (or period) at all times, regardless of measurement and timebase settings, with a resolution of 1 ppm.
Bandwidth limit filters
A selectable analog bandwidth limiter (100 or 500 MHz) on each input channel can be used to reject high frequencies and associated noise. The narrow setting can be used as an anti-alias filter.
SXRTO explained
The basic real-time oscilloscope
Real-time oscilloscopes (RTOs) are designed with a high enough sampling rate to capture a transient, non-repetitive signal with the instrument's specified analog bandwidth. According to Nyquist's sampling theorem, for accurate capture and display of the signal the scope's sampling rate must be at least twice the signal bandwidth. Typical high-bandwidth RTOs exceed this sampling rate by perhaps a factor of two, achieving up to four samples per cycle, or three samples in a minimum-width impulse.
Equivalent-time sampling
For signals close to or above the RTO's Nyquist limit, many RTOs can switch to a mode called equivalent-time sampling (ETS). In this mode the scope collects as many samples as it can after a trigger event, and then continues to collect samples on subsequent trigger events. Because the scope's sampling clock is independent of the trigger event, each trigger has a random time offset relative to the scope's clock. The scope measures this offset and displays the samples at their correct times. After a large number of trigger events the scope has enough samples to display the waveform with the desired time resolution, called the effective sampling resolution (the inverse of the effective sampling rate), which is many times higher than is possible in real-time (non-ETS) mode. As this technique relies on a random relationship between trigger events and the sampling clock, it is more correctly called random equivalent-time sampling (or sometimes random interleaved sampling, RIS). It can only be used for repetitive signals - those that vary little from one trigger event to the next.
Uniquely, the PicoScope 9404 SXRTO has a maximum effective sampling rate in ETS of 1 TS/s. This corresponds to a timing resolution of only 1 ps, 20,000x higher than its actual maximum sampling rate.
The sampler-extended real-time oscilloscope (SXRTO)
Now that we have a technique (ETS) for extending the sampling rate of a real-time oscilloscope, we find that we can achieve an effective sampling rate far higher than is needed to match the instrument's analog bandwidth. In order to make better use of these high effective sampling rates, we can increase the analog bandwidth of the scope. Pico has developed a way to achieve this at a moderate cost, compared to the very high cost of increasing the real-time sampling rate. The result is the sampler-extended real-time oscilloscope (SXRTO).
The PicoScope 9404-05 SXRTO has an analog bandwidth of 5 GHz. This means that it requires a sampling rate of at least 10 GS/s, but for an accurate reconstruction of wave shape without interpolation, we need far higher than this. The 9404 gives us 200 sample points in a single cycle at 5 GHz and 140 points in a minimum-width impulse.
So is the SXRTO a sampling scope?
All this talk of sampling rates and sampling modes may suggest that the SXRTO is a type of sampling scope, but this is not the case. The name sampling scope, by convention, refers to a different kind of instrument. A sampling scope uses a programmable delay generator to take samples at regular intervals after each trigger event. The technique is called sequential equivalent-time sampling and is the principle behind the PicoScope 9300 Series sampling scopes. These scopes can achieve very high effective sampling rates but have two main drawbacks: they cannot capture data before the trigger event, and they require a separate clock signal - either from an external source or from a built-in clock-recovery module.
We've compiled a table to show the differences between the types of scopes mentioned on this page. The example products are all compact, 4-channel, USB PicoScopes.
| |
Real-time scope |
SXRTO |
Sampling scope |
| Model |
PicoScope 6407 |
PicoScope 9404-05 |
PicoScope 9300 Series |
| Analog bandwidth |
1 GHz |
5 GHz |
20 GHz |
| Real-time sampling? |
1 GS/s |
500 MS/s |
1 MS/s |
| Sequential equivalent-time sampling? |
No |
No |
15 TS/s |
| Random equivalent-time sampling? |
100 GS/s |
1 TS/s |
250 MS/s |
| Trigger on input channel? |
Yes |
Yes |
No – requires external clock
or internal clock recovery option |
| Pretrigger capture? |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
| Vertical resolution |
8 bits |
12 bits |
16 bits |
PicoConnect 900 Series high-frequency passive probes
The PicoConnect 900 Series is a range of minimally invasive, high-frequency passive probes, designed for microwave and gigabit applications up to 9 GHz and 18 Gb/s. They deliver unprecedented performance and flexibility at a low price and are an obvious choice to use alongside the PicoScope 9400 Series scopes.
Features of the PicoConnect 900 Series probes
- Extremely low loading capacitance of < 0.3 pF typical, 0.4 pF upper test limit for all models
- Slim, fingertip design for accurate and steady probing or solder-in at fine scale
- Interchangeable SMA probe heads at division ratios of 5:1, 10:1 and 20:1, AC or DC coupled
- Accurate probing of high-speed transmission lines for Z 0 = 0 Ω to 100 Ω
- Class-leading uncorrected pulse/eye response and pulse/eye disturbance
The PicoScope 9404 is supplied either without probes or with a PicoConnect 910 kit consisting of all six PicoConnect 4 to 5 GHz RF microwave and pulse probes to support probing at three division ratios (/5, /10, /20) and either AC or DC coupled models and cables.
Software
Application-configurable PicoSample 4 oscilloscope software
The PicoSample 4 workspace takes full advantage of your available simgle or multiple display size and resolution, allowing you to resize the window to fit any display resolution supported by Windows.
You decide how much space to give to the trace display and the measurements display, and whether to open or hide the control menus. The user interface is fully touch- or mouse-operable, with grabbing and dragging of traces, cursors, regions and parameters. In touchscreen mode, an enlarged parameter control is displayed to assist adjustments on smaller touchscreen displays.
To zoom, either draw a zoom window or use the numerical zoom and offset controls. You can display up to four different zoomed views of the displayed waveforms. "Hidden trace" icons show a live view of any channels that are not visible on the main display.
The interaction of timebase, sampling rate and capture size is normally handled automatically, but there is also an option to override this and specify the order of priority of these three parameters.
A choice of screen formats
When working with multiple traces, you can display them all on one grid or separate them into two or four grids. You can also plot signals in XY mode with or without additional voltage-time grids. The persistence display modes use color-contouring or shading to show statistical variations in the signal. Trace display can be in either dots-only or vector format and display settings can be independent, trace by trace. Custom trace labelling is also available.
PicoSample 4 software
The PicoSample 4 software interface provides access to commands that control all of the instrument features and functions.
Measurements
Standard waveforms and eye parameters
The PicoScope 9400 Series oscilloscopes quickly measure well over 40 standard waveforms and over 40 eye parameters, either for the whole waveform or gated between markers. The markers can also make on-screen ruler measurements, so you don't need to count graticules or estimate the waveforms position. Up to ten simultaneous measurements are possible. The measurements conform to IEEE standard definitions, but you can edit them for non-standard thresholds and reference levels using the advanced menu, or by dragging the on-screen thresholds and levels. You can apply limit tests to up to four measured parameters.
Waveform measurements with statistics
Over 40 standard waveform parameters can be measured in both X and Y axes including X period, frequency, negative or positive cross and jitter. In the Y axis measurements such as max, min, DC RMS and cycle mean are available.
Eye diagram measurements
The PicoScope 9400 Series scopes quickly measure more than 70 fundamental parameters used to characterize non-return-to-zero (NRZ) signals and return-to-zero (RZ) signals. Up to ten parameters can be measured simultaneously, with comprehensive statistics also shown.
Eye diagram analysis can display data including: bit rate, period, crossing time, frequency, eye width, eye amplitude, mean, area and jitter RMS. Also shown on the graph are left and right RMS jitter markers. These measurements are selectable from within the Eye Diagram side menu and are listed on screen below the graph.
The measurement points and levels used to generate each parameter can optionally be drawn on the trace.
Eye-diagram analysis can be made even more powerful with the addition of mask testing, as described below.
Mask testing
PicoSample 4 has a built-in library of over 130 masks for testing data eyes. It can count or capture mask hits or route them to an alarm or acquisition control. You can stress-test against a mask using a specified margin, and locally compile or edit masks.
There's a choice of gray-scale and color-graded display modes, and a histogramming feature, all of which aid in analyzing noise and jitter in eye diagrams. There is also a statistical display showing a failure count for both the original mask and the margin.
The extensive menu of built-in test waveforms is invaluable for checking your mask test setup before using it on live signals.
| Mask test features: |
Masks: |
- Standard predefined mask
- Automask
- Mask saved on disk
- Create new mask
- Edit any mask.
|
- Ethernet (7 masks)
- SONET/SDH (8 masks)
- Fibre channel (23 masks)
- PCI Express (29 mask)
- InfiniBand (12 masks)
- XAUI (4 masks)
- RapidIO (9 masks)
- Serial ATA (24 masks)
- ITU G.703 (14 masks)
- ANSI T1.102 (7 masks)
- USB
|
Powerful mathematical analysis
The PicoScope 9400 Series scopes support up to four simultaneous mathematical combinations or functional transformations of acquired waveforms.
You can select any of the mathematical functions to operate on either one or two sources. All functions can operate on live waveforms, waveform memories or even other functions. There is also a comprehensive equation editor for creating custom functions of any combination of source waveforms.
- Choose from 60 math functions, or create your own.
- Add, subtract, multiply, divide, invert, absolute, exponent, logarithm, differentiate, integrate, inverse, FFT, interpolation, smoothing and trending.
Trending
Trending allows you to plot a measured parameter, such as pulse width, as an additional trace.
FFT analysis
All PicoScope 9400 Series oscilloscopes can calculate real, imaginary and complex Fast Fourier and Inverse Fast Fourier Transforms of input signals using a range of windowing functions. The results can be further processed using the math functions. FFTs are useful for finding crosstalk and distortion problems, adjusting filter circuits, testing system impulse responses and identifying and locating noise and interference sources.
Histogram analysis
Behind the powerful measurement and display capabilities of the 9400 Series lies a fast, efficient data histogram capability. A powerful visualization and analysis tool in its own right, the histogram is a probability graph that shows the distribution of acquired data from a source within a user-definable window.
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 and pulse parameters. A horizontal histogram is typically used to measure and characterize jitter.
Software development kit
The PicoSample 4 software can operate as a standalone oscilloscope program or under ActiveX remote control. The ActiveX control conforms to the Windows COM interface standard so that you can embed it in your own software. Unlike more complex driver- based programming methods, ActiveX commands are text strings that are easy to create in any programming environment. Programming examples are provided in Visual Basic (VB.NET), MATLAB, LabVIEW and Delphi, but you can use any programming language or standard that supports the COM interface, including JavaScript and C. National Instruments LabVIEW drivers are also available. All the functions of the PicoScope 9400 and the PicoSample software are accessible remotely.
We supply a comprehensive programmer’s guide that details every function of the ActiveX control. The SDK can control the oscilloscope over the USB or the LAN port.
PicoScope 9400 Series inputs, outputs and indicators
Power LED: Glows green under normal operation
Status LED: Indicates connection progress
Channel inputs: The PicoScope 9404 has four input channels: Ch 1 to Ch 4. You can enable any number of channels without affecting the sampling rate; only the capture memory (250 kS) is shared between the enabled channels.
Built-in CAL test signal: The calibrator output (CAL) provides a DC, 1 kHz square wave or meander output. This can be used to verify the scope’s inputs.
TRIGGER OUT: Can be used to synchronize an external device to the PicoScope 9404’s rising edge, falling edge and end of holdoff triggers.
RST (reset button)
USB: The USB 2.0 port is used to connect the oscilloscope to the PC. If no USB host is found, the oscilloscope tries to connect through the LAN port.
LAN: LAN settings must be supplied initially by connecting to the USB port. Once configured, the oscilloscope uses the LAN port if no USB host is detected.
PicoSample 4 can control up to eight PicoScope 9400 Series units through the LAN port.
12 V DC input: A suitable mains adaptor is supplied with the oscilloscope |