News
Inspecting electronic materials—atom by atom 7/24/2008
The advantages of imaging individual atoms in electronic materials are obvious. As you learn more about the subtle impact of small quantities of impurities on a crystal, for example, it becomes more important to know just where and in what orientation the impure atoms reside. In principle, this ability should represent the great promise of the electron microscope.Keithley debuts software upgrade and switch/multimeter options 7/24/2008
Keithley Instruments at Semicon West, which took place in San Francisco last month, introduced Version 7.1 of the KTEI (Keithley Test Environment Interactive) for the company’s Model 4200-SCS semiconductor-characterization system.Agilent, picoChip, mimoOn look to 3GPP LTE femtocell opportunities 7/22/2008
Engineers from Agilent Technologies, picoChip, and mimoOn have teamed and tested a 3GPP LTE femtocell reference design using Agilent’s test and measurement technologies.Oscilloscopes harness quad-core CPUs, four-lane PCIe datapaths for 20-fold speed boost 7/1/2008
LeCroy’s newest line offers bandwidths to 6 GHz, four-channel sampling rates to 20G samples/sec, and acquisition-memory options to 128 Mbytes/channel or 256 Mbytes/channel in the two-channel mode, which also doubles the real-time sampling rate.Battery-operated, 6.2-GHz real-time spectrum analyzer incorporates DPX technology, GPS, and mapping
6/24/2008
Tektronix describes its latest real-time spectrum analyzer, the $22,900, rechargeable-battery-operated, 10-kHz to 6.2-GHz SA2600, as a handheld instrument.
In-Depth
A streamlined method of PCI Express interconnect compliance testing 8/20/2008
Time-domain S-parameter measurements can dramatically simplify routine differential insertion-loss measurements. This technique leverages the nearly controlled impedance path in a TDR instrument to reduce the calibration overhead compared with a vector-network-analyzer approach.Measurement-based simulation simplifies analysis of lossy backplanes and cables 7/10/2008
A systematic approach uses DSO-based TDR and TDT measurements to construct models whose simulated response displays an uncanny resemblance to the response of the real hardware.Theory of relativity visits “real-time” clock 6/26/2008
TALES FROM THE CUBE: What would make a logic analyzer's internal clock run faster than real time, but only while being set?Unraveling the dynamic-range specification in modern spectrum analyzers 5/29/2008
Using a relatively simple chart to calculate dynamic range, along with speed and accuracy specifications, ensures that you choose the right spectrum analyzer and make appropriate price/performance trade-offs.Overcoming USB measurement-test-setup issues 5/13/2008
Designers must meet stringent constraints to comply with the USB-IF spec. Clever techniques can help you design your system to meet these specs.Experts
The design-and-test merger 6/26/2008
An effective design-and-test strategy will require a holistic effort across the entire chip-design and -production ecosystem.Pointy tips: How to straighten bent oscilloscope probe tips 5/29/2008
My high-speed-oscilloscope probes were bent so badly that they looked like elf shoes. Here's how I fixed them.Scrape it: How to probe a microstrip trace with no accessible test points or vias 4/28/2008
The lowly scraper is the best tool for the job. Given the right curvature, you can scrape a path just wide enough to reveal a trace under test without exposing other nearby features.External instruments here to stay 3/20/2008
Whatever the interface standard, real external instruments and systems that gather test data and external software that performs yield-learning and other analysis tasks must supplant embedded instruments.Setting up your oscilloscope to measure jitter 10/3/2007
Because real-time oscilloscopes are workhorses in any laboratory, it’s important to know how to get the most out of them. Jitter measurements are particularly sensitive to their environment.DesignIdeas
