DPO4000 Series Digital Phosphor Oscilloscopes: Debug Smarter, Not Harder!

Wave Inspector™ Controls

Imagine trying to efficiently use the Internet if search engines such as Google and Yahoo didn’t exist, web browser features such as Favorites and Links didn’t exist, or Internet Service Providers like AOL or MSN weren’t around. Now you know how most modern oscilloscope users feel when trying to actually use the long record length in their digital oscilloscope. Record length, one of the key specifications of an oscilloscope, is the number of samples it can digitize and store in a single acquisition. The longer the record length, the longer the time window you can capture with high resolution (high sample rate). The first digital oscilloscopes could capture and store only 500 points which made it very difficult to acquire all relevant information around the event being investigated. Over the years, oscilloscope vendors have provided longer and longer record lengths to meet market demands for long capture windows with high resolution to the point that most mid-range oscilloscopes either come standard with, or can be optionally upgraded to, multi-mega-point record lengths. These mega-point record lengths often represent thousands of screens worth of signal activity. While standard record lengths have increased greatly over the years and can now satisfy the vast majority of applications in the marketplace, tools for effectively and efficiently viewing, navigating, and analyzing long record length acquisitions have been sorely neglected until now. The DPO4000 Series redefines expectations for working with long record lengths with the following innovative new Wave Inspector controls:

Wave Inspector™ Controls provide unprecedented efficiency in viewing, navigating, and analyzing waveform data.

Setup & Hold search highlighting numerous setup & hold violations in a single acquisition.

Zoom/Pan – A dedicated, two-tier front-panel knob provides intuitive control of both zooming and panning. The inner knob adjusts the zoom factor (or zoom scale); turning it clockwise activates zoom and goes to progressively higher zoom factors, while turning it counter-clockwise results in lower zoom factors and eventually turning zoom off. The outer knob pans the zoom box across the waveform to quickly get to the portion of the waveform you are interested in. The outer knob also utilizes force-feedback to determine how fast to pan on the waveform. The farther you turn the outer knob, the faster the zoom box moves. Pan direction is changed by simply turning the knob the other way. No longer do you need to navigate through multiple menus to adjust your zoom view.

Play/Pause – A dedicated play/pause button on the front panel scrolls the waveform across the display automatically while you look for anomalies or an event of interest. Playback speed and direction are controlled using the intuitive pan knob. Once again, turning the knob further makes the waveform scroll faster and changing direction is as simple as turning the knob the other way.

User Marks – See something interesting on your waveform? Press the Set Mark button on the front panel to leave one or more “bookmarks” on the waveform. Navigating between marks is as simple as pressing the Previous and Next buttons on the front panel.

Search Marks – Don’t want to take the time to inspect the entire acquisition to find the event you’re looking for? The DPO4000 Series features a robust waveform search feature that allows you to search through your long acquisition based on user-defined criteria. All occurrences of the event are highlighted with search marks and are easily navigated to, using the front panel Previous and Next buttons. Search types include edge, pulse width, runt, logic, setup & hold, rise/fall time, and I2C, SPI, and CAN packet content.

Serial Triggering and Analysis

One of the most common applications requiring long record length is serial data analysis in embedded system design. Embedded systems are literally everywhere. They can contain many different types of devices including microprocessors, microcontrollers, DSPs, RAM, EPROMs, FPGAs, A/Ds, D/As, and I/O. These various devices have traditionally communicated with each other and the outside world using wide parallel buses. Today, however, more and more embedded systems are replacing these wide parallel buses with serial buses due to less board space required, fewer pins, lower power, embedded clocks, differential signaling for better noise immunity, and most importantly, lower cost. In addition, there’s a large supply of off-the-shelf building block components from reputable manufacturers, enabling rapid design development. While serial buses have a large number of benefits, they also present significant challenges that their predecessors (parallel buses) did not face. They make debugging bus and system problems more difficult, it’s harder to isolate events of interest, and it’s more difficult to interpret what is displayed on the oscilloscope screen. The DPO4000 Series addresses these problems and represents the ultimate tool for engineers working with low-speed serial buses such as I2C, SPI, and CAN.

Triggering on a specific data packet going across an I2C bus. Yellow waveform is data, blue waveform is clock. Bus waveform provides decoded packet content including Start, Address, Read/Write, Data, Missing Ack, and Stop.

Bus Display – Provides a higher level, combined view of the individual signals (clock, data, chip enable, etc.) that make up your bus, making it easy to identify where packets begin and end and identifying sub-packet components such as address, data, identifier, CRC, etc.

Serial Triggering – Trigger on packet content such as start of packet, specific addresses, specific data content, unique identifiers, etc. on popular low-speed serial interfaces such as I2C, SPI, and CAN.

Bus Decoding – Tired of having to visually inspect the waveform to count clocks, determine if each bit is a 1 or a 0, combine bits into bytes and determine the hex value? Let the oscilloscope do it for you! Once you’ve set up a bus, the oscilloscope will decode each packet on the bus, and display the value in either hex or binary in the bus waveform.

Packet Decode Table – In addition to seeing decoded packet data on the bus waveform itself, you can view all captured packets in a tabular view much like you would see on a logic analyzer. Packets are listed consecutively with columns for each component (Address, Data, etc.).

Packet decode table showing decoded Identifier, DLC, Data, and CRC for every CAN packet in a long acquisition.

Search – Serial triggering is very useful for isolating the event of interest, but once you’ve captured it and need to analyze the surrounding data, what do you do? In the past, users had to manually scroll through the waveform counting and converting bits and looking for what caused the event. With the DPO4000 Series, you can have the oscilloscope search through the acquired data for user defined criteria including serial packet content. Each occurrence is highlighted by a search mark. Rapid navigation between marks is as simple as pressing the Prev and Next buttons on the front panel.

The Performance and Feature Set You Expect

The DPO4000 Series digital phosphor oscilloscopes (DPO) deliver the performance you need to visualize even your most demanding signals. Bandwidths range from 350 MHz to 1 GHz, and with all models offering a minimum of 5× oversampling on all channels and sin(x)/x interpolation standard, you can be confident that even the fastest transient events will be captured and displayed accurately. The standard 10 M record length on all channels enables you to capture long windows of signal activity while maintaining fine timing resolution. Enabled by Tektronix proprietary DPX® acquisition technology, the DPO4000 Series delivers up to 3,700 waveforms per second capture rates, saving you minutes, hours, or even days by rapidly identifying intermittent glitches and anomalies.

Fast waveform capture rate, enabled by Tektronix proprietary DPX acquisition technology, maximizes the probability of capturing elusive glitches and other infrequent events.

The DPO4000 Series offers a variety of analytical solutions including cursors, 25 automatic measurements, statistics, and waveform math. Despite a tiny footprint (only 5.4” deep) and light weight (11 lbs.), the DPO4000 Series offers exceptional performance, a large 10.4” XGA display and knob per channel vertical controls.

The new TekVPI™ probe interface sets the standard for ease of use in probing. TekVPI probes feature status indicators and controls, as well as a probe menu button right on the comp box itself. This button brings up a probe menu on the oscilloscope display with all relevant settings and controls for the probe. The TekVPI interface utilizes a new probe power management architecture enabling direct attachment of current probes without requiring a separate, bulky power supply. Finally, TekVPI probes can be controlled remotely via USB, GPIB, or Ethernet, enabling more versatile solutions in ATE environments.

The DPO4000 Series delivers an unprecedented new level of USB plug 'n' play operation and PC connectivity. Acquiring data and measurements from the instrument is as simple as connecting a USB cable from the oscilloscope to the PC. Provided applications include National Instruments SignalExpress™ Tektronix Edition, OpenChoice® Desktop, and Microsoft Excel and Word toolbars enabling fast and easy direct communication with your Windows PC. USB and CompactFlash ports on the front panel enable simple transfer of screenshots, instrument settings, and waveform data in the palm of your hand.

The unprecedented Wave Inspector™ controls, coupled with the DPO4000’s exceptional performance, comprehensive feature set, and innovative package design provide exceptional value.

OpenChoice® Desktop—Standard software seamlessly connects the oscilloscope to a PC.

National Instruments SignalExpress Tektronix Edition—Fully interactive measurement acquisition and analysis software developed jointly with NI, and optimized for the DPO4000 Series.

Other Applications

Video Design and Development

Many video engineers have remained loyal to analog oscilloscopes, believing the intensity gradations on an analog display are the only way to see certain video waveform details. The DPO4000 Series has the same information-rich display as an analog oscilloscope, but with much more detail. Tektronix exclusive DPX® acquisition technology sets the DPO4000 Series apart from other digital oscilloscopes, enabling the capture of up to 3,700 waveforms per second for a live, analog-like display and providing the intensity-graded view you need to interpret the waveform. With up to 1 GHz bandwidth and four inputs, the DPO4000 family provides ample performance for analog and digital video use.

Viewing an NTSC video signal. Notice the intensity-graded view provided by the DPO’s ability to represent time, amplitude and distribution of amplitude over time.

Digital Design and Debug

The interoperability of the DPO4000 Series oscilloscope with the Tektronix TLA5000 Series logic analyzer made possible by Tektronix' Integrated View (iView™) feature enables digital designers to solve signal integrity challenges and effectively debug and verify their systems more quickly and easily. The iView feature fully integrates the industry-leading performance and measurement accuracy of a Tektronix oscilloscope with the multi-channel and powerful triggering capabilities of a Tektronix logic analyzer. This integration allows designers to view time-correlated digital and analog data in the same display window, and isolate analog characteristics of digital signals that are causing failures in their systems. The iView Wizard feature simplifies this integration of the oscilloscope and logic analyzer by guiding the user through set up and connection. No user calibration is required. And, once set up, the iView feature is completely automated. The result—an integrated tool set for digital design and troubleshooting.

Tektronix' Integrated View feature (iView) fully integrates the performance and measurement accuracy of a Tektronix oscilloscope with the multi-channel and powerful triggering capabilities of a Tektronix logic analyzer in one display, allowing designers to quickly verify and debug their designs.