Real-time oscilloscope hits 65 GHz bandwidth, 100 GHz target for 2013
The first 100 GHz real-time oscilloscope using LeCroy’s patented Digital Bandwidth Interleave™ (DBI) technology will be available in calendar year 2013. This technology is used in the company’s current product lines to achieve 45 GHz real-time bandwidth, and has been supplied to customers since 2010.
LeCroy’s silicon bandwidth advantage is due to years of accumulated experience with widely adopted, mainstream, commercial SiGe processes. The company uses 8HP SiGe, the most recently available process, to obtain 36 GHz on four channels. The 65 GHz model and 100 GHz plans are implemented with the company’s patented and proven technology path, DBI. Furthermore, the proprietary ChannelSync™ architecture in the LabMaster 10 Zi oscilloscopes permits precise synchronization of up to eighty silicon-based 36-GHz/80-GS/s channels and up to forty 65-GHz/160-GS/s DBI channels — with a future 100 GHz upgrade path.
Modular platform
The LabMaster modular oscilloscope architecture separates the oscilloscope signal acquisition function from the display, control, and processing functions. The LabMaster Master Control Module (MCM-Zi) contains the display, controls, ChannelSync architecture, and a powerful server-class CPU. LabMaster 10 Zi Acquisition Modules, provide silicon-based 36 GHz performance with up to 65 GHz on two channels (and future upgrade to 100 GHz on one channel). One LabMaster 10 Zi Master Control Module and one LabMaster 10 Zi Acquisition Module function as a single, conventional four channel 36 GHz oscilloscope, or as a conventional two-channel 65 GHz and four-channel 36 GHz oscilloscope. However, by using ChannelSync architecture, up to twenty LabMaster 10 Zi Acquisition Modules can be perfectly synchronized, thus extending the already unique channel density performance by a factor of twenty to achieve up to eighty channels at 36 GHz and forty channels at 65 GHz. A newly announced expansion module for LabMaster oscilloscopes provides the capability to quadruple the total number of acquisition modules and channels compared to before.
The LabMaster ChannelSync architecture advantages are numerous. There is a single sample clock and trigger circuit utilized by all acquisition modules to provide the highest acquisition precision possible for up to eighty channels. The modular design is "plug-and-play", so no programming, external clocking, clock synchronization, or complex connections between oscilloscopes are required. There is a single display and a single server-class (12-core) central processing unit (CPU) in the MCM-Zi Master Control Module. All acquired channels and processed waveforms from all acquisition modules are displayed in one location for ease of use and understanding of information — just like in a single, conventional oscilloscope. The entire connection and setup of multiple oscilloscope acquisition modules, including fine deskew calibration, takes approximately five to ten minutes. Nothing could be simpler.
28 Gb/s true-hardware serial trigger
A 28 Gb/s serial pattern trigger is available with support for up to 80-bit non-return to zero (NRZ) serial patterns, 8b/10b and 64b/66b symbols, and PCI Express Generation 3.0 protocol. This is in addition to the previously announced 14.1 Gb/s serial trigger with identical NRZ, symbol and protocol support. Both of these are true-hardware FPGA-based triggers that provide real-time monitoring of the acquisition stream and capture specific serial data traffic as defined by the user. This trigger is able to isolate errors to specific bit patterns or symbols and is more sophisticated and useful compared to a "software-trigger".
Multi-lane serial data analysis and crosstalk/noise analysis
At DesignCon 2012 in Santa Clara, California, LeCroy previewed the ability to display eye diagrams, histograms, bathtub curves, jitter measurements, and so on on four lanes simultaneously with reference/compare capability. Additionally, the crosstalk/analysis application package was previewed. These capabilities have been beta-tested and will be available to customers in July of 2012. These capabilities are ideally suited to customers who are testing four lanes of electrical serial data, such as 40 GbE (4 x 10 Gb/s) or 100 GbE (4 x 25 or 28 Gb/s) and who need the ability to visually assess multiple lanes simultaneously for crosstalk infringement, measure amplitude noise at specific sampling points in the unit interval, and then perform subsequent analysis on crosstalk root cause.
A LabMaster 10 Zi system with four channels at 65 GHz (two acquisition modules) will provide the ability to view two lanes simultaneously using cabled inputs and capture serial data signals with power spectral density to nearly the fifth harmonic, or use eight channels at 36 GHz to capture all four lanes for detailed crosstalk analysis.
Optical transmission using coherent MIMO
While DP-QPSK and 16-QAM modulation formats have garnered most of the research investments for optical transmission in the past few years, parallel optical systems, such as frequency-parallel coherent optical super-channels or spatially-parallel coherent optical multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems have been gaining attention due to their ability to scale fiber capacities and to obtain higher transmission rates with lower speed components. In recent MIMO experiments done at Bell Labs a LabMaster 9 Zi-A modular oscilloscope with twelve channels was utilized to demonstrate a mode-multiplexed 6 x 20-GBaud QPSK transmission (240-Gb/s per wavelength channel) up to 4200 km and the results were honored with post-deadline paper acceptance at OFC/NFOEC in Los Angeles, California in March 2012.
Towards Terabit/second interface rates
Other researchers at Bell Labs have also used LabMaster oscilloscopes for record-breaking QPSK and 16-QAM research at data rates approaching 1 Tb/s, most recently a 640-Gb/s single-channel line rate using 80-GBaud PDM-16QAM.
"LabMaster oscilloscopes have played a key role in our research at Bell Labs. In our coherent MIMO experiments, the modular oscilloscope system synchronizes all twelve high-speed channels for us, which significantly facilitates our experiments," commented Dr. Peter Winzer from Bell Labs.
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