Mixed Signal Oscilloscopes Datasheet

Features & Benefits

Key performance specifications

• 1 GHz, 500 MHz, 350 MHz, and 100 MHz bandwidth models
• 2 and 4 analog channel models
• 16 Digital Channels (MSO Series)
• Up to 5 GS/s sample rate on all channels
• Up to 20 mega-point record length on all channels
• >50,000 wfm/s maximum waveform capture rate
• Standard passive voltage probes with less than 4 pF capacitive loading and 500 MHz or 1 GHz analog bandwidth
• Suite of advanced triggers

Key features

• Wave Inspector^® controls provide easy navigation and automated search of waveform data
• 41 automated measurements, and FFT analysis for simplified waveform analysis
• 16 digital channels (MSO series)
• Mixed signal design and analysis (MSO series)
• Automated triggering, decode, and search on parallel buses
• Per-channel threshold settings
• Multichannel setup and hold triggering
• MagniVu™ High-speed acquisition provides 60.6 ps fine timing resolution on digital channels
• Optional serial triggering and analysis - automated serial triggering, decode, and search options for I²C, SPI, USB, Ethernet, CAN, LIN, FlexRay, RS-232/422/485/UART, MIL-STD-1553, and I²S/LJ/RJ/TDM
• TekVPI^® probe interface supports active, differential, and current probes for automatic scaling and units
• 10.4 in. (264 mm) Bright XGA color display
• Small footprint and lightweight – Only 5.8 in. (147 mm) deep and 11 lb. (5 kg)

Connectivity

• Two USB 2.0 host ports on the front panel and two on the rear panel for quick and easy data storage, printing, and connecting a USB keyboard
• USB 2.0 device port on rear panel for easy connection to a PC or direct printing to a PictBridge^®-compatible printer
• Integrated 10/100/1000BASE-T Ethernet port for network connection and video out port to export the oscilloscope display to a monitor or projector

Optional application support

• Power analysis
• Limit and mask testing
• HDTV and custom video analysis

 

With the MSO/DPO4000B Mixed Signal Oscilloscope Series, you can analyze up to 20 analog and digital signals with a single instrument to quickly find and diagnose problems in complex designs. Bandwidths up to 1 GHz and up to 5X oversampling on all channels ensure you have the performance you need to see fast-changing signal details. To capture long windows of signal activity while maintaining fine timing resolution, the MSO/DPO4000B Series offers deep record length of up to 20M points standard on all channels. And with Wave Inspector^® controls for rapid waveform navigation, automated serial and parallel bus analysis, limit and mask testing, and automated power analysis – your Tektronix oscilloscope provides the feature-rich tools you need to simplify and speed debug of your complex design.

Comprehensive features speed every stage of debug

These oscilloscopes offer a robust set of features to speed every stage of debugging your design – from quickly discovering an anomaly and capturing it, to searching your waveform record for the event and analyzing its characteristics and your device’s behavior.

Discover

Discover – Fast waveform capture rate - over 50,000 wfm/s - maximizes the probability of capturing elusive glitches and other infrequent events.

To debug a design problem, first you must know it exists. Every design engineer spends time looking for problems in their design, a time-consuming and frustrating task without the right debug tools.

The industry’s most complete visualization of signals provides fast insight into the real operation of your device. A fast waveform capture rate – greater than 50,000 waveforms per second – enables you to see glitches and other infrequent transients within seconds, revealing the true nature of device faults. A digital phosphor display with intensity grading shows the history of a signal’s activity by intensifying areas of the signal that occur more frequently, providing a visual display of just how often anomalies occur.

Capture

Capture – Triggering on a specific transmit data packet going across an RS-232 bus. A complete set of triggers, including triggers for specific serial packet content, ensures you quickly capture your event of interest.

Discovering a device fault is only the first step. Next, you must capture the event of interest to identify root cause.

Accurately capturing any signal of interest begins with proper probing. Low-capacitance probes are included with the oscilloscope, one for each analog channel. These industry-first high-impedance passive voltage probes have less than 4 pF of capacitive loading to minimize the affect of the probe on your circuit's operation, offering the performance of an active probe with the flexibility of a passive probe.

A complete set of triggers - including runt, timeout, logic, pulse width/glitch, setup/hold violation, serial packet, and parallel data - help you quickly find your event. With up to a 20M point record length, you can capture many events of interest, even thousands of serial packets, in a single acquisition for further analysis while maintaining high resolution to zoom in on fine signal details.

From triggering on specific packet content to automatic decode in multiple data formats, the oscilloscope provides integrated support for the industry's broadest range of serial buses - I²C, SPI, USB, Ethernet, CAN, LIN, FlexRay, RS-232/422/485/UART, MIL-STD-1553, and I²S/LJ/RJ/TDM. The ability to decode up to four serial and/or parallel buses simultaneously means you gain insight into system-level problems quickly.

To further help troubleshoot system-level interactions in complex embedded systems, the oscilloscope offers 16 digital channels in addition to its analog channels. Since the digital channels are fully integrated into the oscilloscope, you can trigger across all input channels, automatically time correlating all analog, digital, and serial signals. The MagniVu™ high-speed acquisition on these channels enables you to acquire fine signal detail (up to 60.6 ps resolution) around the trigger point for precision timing measurements. MagniVu is essential for making accurate timing measurements for setup and hold, clock delay, signal skew, and glitch characterization.

Search

Search – I²C decode showing results from a Wave Inspector search for Address value 50. Wave Inspector controls provide unprecedented efficiency in viewing and navigating waveform data.

Finding your event of interest in a long waveform record can be time consuming without the right search tools. With today's record lengths pushing beyond a million data points, locating your event can mean scrolling through thousands of screens of signal activity.

The innovative Wave Inspector^® controls give you the industry’s most comprehensive search and waveform navigation capability. These controls speed panning and zooming through your record. With a unique force-feedback system, you can move from one end of your record to the other in just seconds. User marks allow you to mark any location that you may want to reference later for further investigation. Or, automatically search your record for criteria you define. Wave Inspector will instantly search your entire record, including analog, digital, and serial bus data. Along the way it will automatically mark every occurrence of your defined event so you can quickly move between events.

Analyze

Analyze – Waveform histogram of a falling edge showing the distribution of edge position (jitter) over time. Included are numeric measurements made on the waveform histogram data. A comprehensive set of integrated analysis tools speeds verification of your design's performance.

Verifying that your prototype's performance matches simulations and meets the project's design goals requires analyzing its behavior. Tasks can range from simple checks of rise times and pulse widths to sophisticated power loss analysis and investigation of noise sources.

The oscilloscope offers a comprehensive set of integrated analysis tools including waveform- and screen-based cursors, automated measurements, advanced waveform math including arbitrary equation editing, FFT analysis, and trend plots for visually determining how a measurement is changing over time. Specialized application support for serial bus analysis, power supply design, and video design and development is also available.

For extended analysis, National Instrument’s LabVIEW SignalExpress^® Tektronix Edition provides over 200 built-in functions including time and frequency domain analysis, limit testing, data logging, and customizable reports.

Mixed domain analysis

Working with RF signals? Be sure to check out the MDO4000 Series - the world's first Mixed Domain Oscilloscope. Built on the MSO4000B oscilloscope platform, the MDO4000 Series offers a built-in spectrum analyzer (up to 6 GHz). This combination offers you the ability to capture time-correlated analog, digital, and RF signals in a single instrument. For more information on the MDO4000 Series, please visit www.tektronix.com/mdo4000.

Wave Inspector^® navigation and search

Wave Inspector controls provide unprecedented efficiency in viewing, navigating, and analyzing waveform data. Zip through 20M point records by turning the outer pan control (1). Get from the beginning to end in seconds. See something of interest and want to see more details? Just turn the inner zoom control (2).

With up to 20M record lengths, a single acquisition can include thousands of screens of waveform data. Wave Inspector^®, the industry’s best tool for navigation and search, enables you to find events of interest in seconds.

Zoom and pan

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

Play/Pause

A dedicated Play/Pause front-panel button 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 control. Once again, turning the control further makes the waveform scroll faster and changing direction is as simple as turning the control the other way.

Search step 1: You define what you would like to find.


Search step 2: Wave Inspector automatically searches through the record and marks each event with a hollow white triangle. You can then use the Previous and Next buttons to jump from one event to the next.

User marks

Press the Set Mark front-panel button to place one or more marks on the waveform. Navigating between marks is as simple as pressing the Previous (←) and Next (→) buttons on the front panel.

Search marks

The Search button allows you to automatically search through your long acquisition looking for user-defined events. 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/glitch, timeout, runt, logic, setup and hold, rise/fall time, parallel bus, and I²C, SPI, USB, Ethernet, CAN, LIN, FlexRay, RS-232/422/485/UART, MIL-STD-1553, and I²S/LJ/RJ/TDM packet content.

Digital phosphor technology

Digital phosphor technology enables greater than 50,000 wfm/s waveform capture rate and real-time intensity grading.

Digital phosphor technology provides you with fast insight into the real operation of your device. Its fast waveform capture rate – greater than 50,000 wfm/s – gives you a high probability of quickly seeing the infrequent problems common in digital systems: runt pulses, glitches, timing issues, and more.

Waveforms are superimposed with one another and waveform points that occur more frequently are intensified. This quickly highlights the events that over time occur more often or, in the case of infrequent anomalies, occur less often.

You can choose infinite persistence or variable persistence, determining how long the previous waveform acquisitions stay on-screen. This allows you to determine how often an anomaly is occurring.

Accurate high-speed probing

The TPP Series probes, included standard with every MSO/DPO4000B Series oscilloscope, provide up to 1 GHz of analog bandwidth, and less than 4 pF of capacitive loading. The extremely low capacitive loading minimizes adverse affects on your circuits and is more forgiving of longer ground leads. And, since the probe bandwidth matches your oscilloscope bandwidth, you can see the high-frequency components in your signal which is critical for high-speed applications. The TPP Series passive voltage probes offer all the benefits of general-purpose probes like high dynamic range, flexible connection options, and robust mechanical design, while providing the performance of active probes. In addition, a low-attenuation, 2X version of the TPP probes is available for measuring low voltages. Unlike other low-attenuation passive probes, the TPP0502 has high bandwidth (500 MHz) as well as low capacitive loading (12.7 pF).

Mixed signal design and analysis (MSO series)

The MSO Series provides 16 integrated digital channels enabling you to view and analyze time-correlated analog and digital signals.

The MSO models provide 16 digital channels that are tightly integrated into the oscilloscope's user interface. This simplifies operation and makes it possible to solve mixed-signal issues easily.

Color-coded digital waveform display

White edges indicate additional information is available by zooming in. As shown here, zooming in on the white edge reveals a hidden glitch.

This oscilloscope has redefined the way you view digital waveforms. One common problem shared by both logic analyzers and mixed-signal oscilloscopes is determining if data is a one or a zero when zoomed in far enough that the digital trace stays flat all the way across the display. Color-coded digital traces display ones in green and zeros in blue.

With the color-coded digital waveform display, groups are created by simply placing digital channels together on the screen, allowing the digital channels to be moved as a group. You can set threshold values for each channel, enabling support for up to 16 different logic families.

The multiple transition detection hardware shows you a white edge on the display when the system detects multiple transitions. White edges indicate that more information is available by zooming in or acquiring at faster sampling rates. In most cases zooming in will reveal the pulse that was not viewable with the previous settings. If the white edge is still present after zooming in as far as possible, this indicates that increasing the sample rate on the next acquisition will reveal higher frequency information than the previous settings could acquire.

You can group digital waveforms and enter waveform labels by using a USB keyboard. By simply placing digital waveforms next to each other, they form a group.

Once a group is formed, you can position all the channels contained in that group collectively. This greatly reduces the normal setup time associated with positioning channels individually.

MagniVu^® High-speed acquisition

The MagniVu high-resolution record provides 60.6 ps timing resolution, enabling you to make critical timing measurements on your digital waveforms.

The main digital acquisition mode on the MSO4000B Series will capture up to 20M points at 500 MS/s (2 ns resolution). In addition to the main record, the oscilloscope provides an ultra high-resolution record called MagniVu which acquires 10,000 points at up to 16.5 GS/s (60.6 ps resolution). Both main and MagniVu waveforms are acquired on every trigger and can be switched between in the display at any time, running or stopped. MagniVu provides significantly finer timing resolution than comparable MSOs on the market, instilling confidence when making critical timing measurements on digital waveforms.

P6616 MSO probe

The P6616 MSO probe offers two eight-channel pods to simplify connecting to your device.

This unique probe design offers two eight-channel pods. Each channel ends with a probe tip featuring a recessed ground for simplified connection to the device under test. The coax on the first channel of each pod is colored blue making it easy to identify. The common ground uses an automotive-style connector making it easy to create custom grounds for connecting to the device under test. When connecting to square pins, the P6616 has an adapter that attaches to the probe head extending the probe ground flush with the probe tip so you can attach to a header. The P6616 offers outstanding electrical characteristics, having only 3 pF of capacitive loading, a 100 kΩ input resistance, and capable of acquiring toggle rates >500 MHz and pulses as short as 1 ns in duration.

Serial triggering and analysis (optional)

Triggering on a specific OUT Token packet on a USB full-speed serial bus. The yellow waveform is the D+ and the blue waveform is the D–. A bus waveform provides decoded packet content including Start, Sync, PID, Address, End Point, CRC, Data values, and Stop.

On a serial bus, a single signal often includes address, control, data, and clock information. This can make isolating events of interest difficult. Automatic trigger, decode, and search on bus events and conditions gives you a robust set of tools for debugging serial buses.

Serial triggering

Trigger on packet content such as start of packet, specific addresses, specific data content, unique identifiers, etc. on popular serial interfaces such as I²C, SPI, USB, Ethernet, CAN, LIN, FlexRay, RS-232/422/485/UART, MIL-STD-1553, and I²S/LJ/RJ/TDM.

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 subpacket components such as address, data, identifier, CRC, etc.

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 MSO/DPO4000B Series will decode each packet on the bus, and display the value in hex, binary, decimal (USB, Ethernet, MIL-STD-1553, LIN, and FlexRay only), signed decimal (I²S/LJ/RJ/TDM only), or ASCII (USB, Ethernet, and RS-232/422/485/UART only) in the bus waveform.

Event table

Event table showing decoded Identifier, DLC, DATA, and CRC for every CAN packet in a long acquisition.

In addition to seeing decoded packet data on the bus waveform itself, you can view captured packets in a tabular view much like you would see in a software listing. Packets are time stamped and listed consecutively with columns for each component (Address, Data, etc.). Event table data can be saved to .csv format.

Search (serial triggering)

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. You can have the oscilloscope automatically 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 Previous (←) and Next (→) buttons on the front panel.

Power analysis (optional)

Safe operating area measurement. Automated power measurements enable quick and accurate analysis of common power parameters.

Ever increasing consumer demand for longer battery-life devices and for green solutions that consume less power require power-supply designers to characterize and minimize switching losses to improve efficiency. In addition, the supply’s power levels, output purity, and harmonic feedback into the power line must be characterized to comply with national and regional power quality standards. Historically, making these and many other power measurements on an oscilloscope has been a long, manual, and tedious process. The optional power analysis tools greatly simplify these tasks, enabling quick and accurate analysis of power quality, switching loss, harmonics, safe operating area (SOA), modulation, ripple, and slew rate (di/dt, dv/dt). Completely integrated into the oscilloscope, the power analysis tools provide automated, repeatable power measurements with a touch of a button; no external PC or complex software setup is required.

Limit/Mask testing

Limit Test showing a mask created from a golden waveform and compared against a live signal. Results showing statistical information about the test are displayed.

A common task during the development process is characterizing the behavior of certain signals in a system. One method, called limit testing, is to compare a tested signal to a known good or "golden" version of the same signal with user-defined vertical and horizontal tolerances. Another common method, called mask testing, is to compare a tested signal to a mask, looking for where a signal under test violates the mask. The MSO/DPO4000B Series offers both limit and mask testing capability useful for long-term signal monitoring, characterizing signals during design, or testing on a production line. A robust set of telecommunications and computer standards are provided to test for compliance to a standard. Additionally, custom masks can be created and used for characterizing signals. Tailor a test to your specific requirements by defining test duration in number of waveforms or time, a violation threshold that must be met before considering a test a failure, counting hits along with statistical information, and actions upon violations, test failure, and test complete. Whether specifying a mask from a known good signal or from a custom or standard mask, conducting pass/fail tests in search of waveform anomalies such as glitches has never been easier.

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 fast waveform capture rate, coupled with its intensity-graded view of the signal, provides the same information-rich display as an analog oscilloscope, but with much more detail and all the benefits of digital scopes.

Standard features such as IRE and mV graticules, holdoff by fields, video polarity, and an Autoset smart enough to detect video signals, make these the easiest to use oscilloscopes on the market for video applications. And with high bandwidth and four analog inputs, the oscilloscope provides ample performance for analog and digital video use.

The video functionality is further extended with an optional video application module, which provides the industry's most complete suite of HDTV and custom (nonstandard) video triggers.

Designed to make your work easier

The MSO/DPO4000B Series is designed to make your work easier. The large, high-resolution display shows intricate signal details. Dedicated front-panel controls simplify operation. Two USB host ports on the front panel allow you to easily transfer screenshots, instrument settings, and waveform data to a USB thumb drive.

Large, high-resolution display

The MSO/DPO4000B Series features a 10.4 in. (264 mm) bright, LED backlit XGA color display for seeing intricate signal details.

Dedicated front-panel controls

Per-channel vertical controls provide simple and intuitive operation. No longer do you need to share one set of vertical controls across all four channels.

Connectivity

Two USB host ports on the front panel enable easy transfer of screenshots, instrument settings, and waveform data to a USB thumb drive. The rear panel contains two additional USB host ports and a USB device port for controlling the oscilloscope remotely from a PC or for connecting a USB keyboard. The USB device port can also be used to print directly to a PictBridge^®-compatible printer. An integrated 10/100/1000BASE-T Ethernet port enables easy connection to networks and a Video Out port allows the oscilloscope display to be exported to an external monitor or projector. The instrument can mount external network drives for easy storage of screen images, setup files, or data files. Setup or data files can then be directly recalled and loaded into the oscilloscope from the network drive location. The MSO/DPO4000B Series is LXI Class-C compliant.

Compact form factor

The MSO/DPO4000B Series compact form factor frees up valuable space on your bench or desktop.

With the compact, portable form factor, you can easily move the oscilloscope between labs. And with a depth of just 5.8 inches (147 mm), it saves you valuable space on your test bench.

TekVPI^® probe interface

TekVPI probe interface simplifies connecting your probes to the oscilloscope.

The TekVPI probe interface sets the standard for ease of use in probing. In addition to the secure, reliable connection that the interface provides, TekVPI probes feature status indicators and controls, as well as a probe menu button right on the compensation 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 enables direct attachment of current probes without requiring a separate power supply. TekVPI probes can be controlled remotely through USB, GPIB, or LAN, enabling more versatile solutions in ATE environments.

Extended analysis

OpenChoice^® Desktop software enables seamless connection between the oscilloscope and your PC.

Exporting data and measurements is as simple as connecting a USB cable from the oscilloscope to your PC. Key software applications – NI LabVIEW SignalExpress™ Tektronix Edition LE, OpenChoice^® Desktop, and Microsoft Excel and Word toolbars – are included standard with each oscilloscope to enable fast and easy direct communication with your Windows PC.

NI LabVIEW SignalExpress Tektronix Edition LE enables you to instantly acquire, generate, analyze, compare, import, and save measurement data and signals using an intuitive drag-and-drop user interface that does not require any programming. The optional Professional Version offers over 200 built-in functions that provide additional signal processing, advanced analysis, sweeping, limit testing and user-defined step capabilities.

For simple tasks, the included OpenChoice Desktop enables fast and easy communication between the oscilloscope and your PC through USB or LAN for transferring settings, waveforms, and screen images.

The LXI web interface provides access to network settings, enables remote instrument control and is accessible from any standard web browser.

The MSO/DPO4000B Series can also be connected to your network using the LAN port. The included LXI web interface provides information about the current configuration of your MSO/DPO4000B Series oscilloscope, including network configuration. The LXI web interface also provides remote instrument control through the popular e*Scope web-based instrument control capability. You can make changes to the network configuration, control instrument settings, save screen images and instrument data, and save/load instrument setups of your oscilloscope directly from the web interface through a password-protected web page.