Digital scopes are optimised for serial analysis

The breakthrough performance of the WavePro 7 Zi Series will change the way engineers gather insight using oscilloscopes.

LeCroy Corporation's new line of WavePro digital oscilloscopes, serial data analysers, and disk drive analysers - the WP7 Zi Series - integrates performance, speed and a user interface optimised for analysis to enhance the design, debug and validation process beyond any other instrument in its class.

New and superior feature finder, rare event capture technologies and the deepest toolbox with the greatest horsepower combine for powerful debug capability.

Exceptional responsiveness and 10-20x faster processing throughput lead to more efficient validation.

A new form-factor and the largest display available on any oscilloscope make finding root cause easier.

The breakthrough performance of the WavePro 7 Zi Series changes the way engineers gather insight using oscilloscopes.

The WP7 Zi continues in the tradition of the LeCroy WavePro brand which is known for excellent performance in sample rate and memory, and the ability to solve a wide variety of problems.

With a high sample rate of 20Gsample/s on all four channels and 40 Gsample/s interleaved; long record length (10Mpoint per channel standard - 20Mpoint per channel for SDA and DDAs - up to 128Mpoint per channel optional); both 1Mohm and 50ohm inputs from 1.5 to 6GHz; and a wide variety of probes, options and accessories, the WavePro 7 Zi Series allows engineers to solve any design challenge.

The WP7 Zi Series serial data analysers and disk drive analysers are based on the WavePro oscilloscope, with additional capabilities included as standard, such as unparalleled insight into traditional eye diagrams, enabling the user to plot lines of constant bit error rate (BER) directly on the acquired eye pattern, and cable de-embedding so that the effects of the connecting cable are completely removed.

WavePro 7 Zi Series oscilloscopes are available in 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, 4 and 6GHz bandwidths.

SDA 7 Zi Series serial data analysers are available in 2.5, 3.5, 4 and 6GHz bandwidths.

WavePro 7 Zi makes long acquisition memory a pleasure to use with X-Stream II fast throughput streaming architecture, available exclusively from LeCroy.

This architecture uses variable waveform segment lengths to improve CPU cache memory efficiency.

Traditional digital oscilloscopes that process full-size waveforms in one length pay a performance penalty due to overly simplistic architectures that are inattentive to the CPU architecture.

As a result, WavePro 7 Zi is 10-20x faster when processing long records compared with other oscilloscopes.

X-Stream II is augmented with an Intel Core 2 Quad processor, high-speed databuses, a 64bit OS, and up to 8Gbyte of RAM to excel at long acquisitions and deep insight.

X-Stream II enables engineers to be more productive and efficient by providing deep insight and understanding of complex waveform behaviour.

LeCroy's LSIB solution enables direct connection to the PCI Express X4 high-speed databus in the oscilloscope to enable data transfer rates up to 500Mpoint/s for 100Mpoint or longer records.

LSIB is faster than the typical GPIB transfer rate of around 1Mpoint/s; the 100BaseT Ethernet (LAN) transfer rates up to 10Mpoint/s; or the 1000BaseT Gigabit Ethernet rate of 22Mpoint/s.

All that is required is installation of an optional LeCroy LSIB card in the scope and the corresponding host board or card (for desktop or laptop PC) in the remote computer.

Data transfer is easily enabled through a supplied application program interface (API).

The ability to capture many millions of measurements in a short period of time, intuitively analyse for signal anomalies, and shorten time to find anomalies greatly aids in successful debug.

WavePro 7 Zi contains new tools, such as TriggerScan, and new capability, such as smart trigger 200ps pulsewidth triggering and 80bit/3.125Gbit/s high speed serial pattern triggers, to aid the design engineer in debugging.

In addition, tools previously available in other LeCroy oscilloscopes, such as LeCroy WaveStream fast viewing mode, WaveScan advanced search and analysis, low speed serial triggers (I2C, SPI, UART-RS232, CAN, LIN and FlexRay), MS-250 and MS-500 4+36 mixed signal options, are now available with the Fully featured WavePro 700Zi.

From 1.5 to 6GHz, the capability present in WavePro 700Zi is simply not available in any other oscilloscope.

TriggerScan detects and captures more anomalies per second than simple fast viewing tools by using high-speed trigger hardware to detect undesired behaviour, then capture and display it in a persistence mode for additional analysis and action.

TriggerScan captures only the signals of interest and provides answers in minutes instead of hours.

In addition, there is little degradation of detect and capture capability at longer capture times or higher sampling rates.

Setup of TriggerScan is easy - predefined or user-defined sets of edge, smart or serial trigger setups (up to 100) are recalled.

TriggerScan rapidly sequences through each individual trigger with a user-defined dwell time, and captures and displays any anomalous signals that meet the trigger condition(s).

As hardware triggering is used to capture only the anomalies, TriggerScan is more effective at finding anomalies quickly compared with simple display technologies.

Furthermore, TriggerScan is effective even at longer acquisitions, so establishing relationships between events can happen faster.

Once a rare event or undesired behaviour is found, its relationship to other events must be established.

WavePro 7 Zi makes this easy.

WavePro 7 Zi from 1.5 to 6GHz contains both 50ohm and 1Mohm input capability, and 4-6GHz units contain both ProBus and ProLink input types (switchable, with one of the two inputs being active at any given time).

This is a significant advantage for a design engineer who needs to probe a wide range of low speed and high speed signals.

No 1Mohm input adapters need to be located to connect a passive probe for simple measurements, and the entire existing investment in LeCroy probes, such as current probes, single-ended or differential active probes, high voltage probes etc is fully leveraged.

LeCroy has been well-known for deep toolboxes and advanced analysis capability.

True to tradition, WavePro 7 Zi offers more measurement, maths, graphing, statistical, frequency analysis, mask testing and other tools as standard and more ways to leverage the tools to get the answers quickly.

WavePro 7 Zi includes the following tools.

The Processing Web Editor offers a graphical, intuitive way to create powerful, chained maths or measurement calculations using the full power of the LeCroy deep toolbox.

Fast Fourier transforms (FFTs) are available up to 50Mpoint in length, achieving higher frequency resolution and deeper insight in the frequency domain.

Parameter maths allow users to add, subtract, multiply and divide any two standard or custom parameters.

Eight maths/zoom functions enhance the capability to do complex maths by providing double the previous number of standard maths functions.

WPZi-Spectrum provides additional capability to measure power density, real, imaginary and magnitude squared FFT types.

It also includes controls that emulate much of the behaviour of a spectrum analyser, such as resolution bandwidth, centre frequency and span.

Traditional LeCroy tools, such as tracks, trends, histograms and digital filters, are also optionally available for WavePro 7 Zi.

These tools are noted for their ability to be flexibly applied to a wide variety of parameters or waveforms (instead of being restricted within special application packages, as in many competitive offerings) and offer essentially unlimited ability to be used at the longest memory settings.

LeCroy has taken a novel, fully integrated approach to customisation in the oscilloscope.

For example, a user might want to perform an inverse FFT.

This capability is not available in oscilloscopes, but is present in Matlab as a predefined function.

A Matlab script can be written and modified within an oscilloscope dialog box, and the scope application will execute the entire script and call the referenced function(s).

The result is displayed on the scope graticule or in the parameter table, and can be used just like any waveform.

The WavePro 7 Zi has a 15.3in WXGA display - the largest available on any oscilloscope.

This display is enhanced with an accessory 15.3in identical display that mounts to the top of the oscilloscope and provides capability to view LabNotebook, Processing Web, or 3rd party programs (Excel, Word, Matlab, Simulink etc).

This significantly enhances the user experience, and provides for increased debug and analysis efficiency.

In addition, the WavePro 7 Zi front panel is removable from the oscilloscope mainframe.

The connection of the front panel to the oscilloscope mainframe is via USB, so it is easy to locate the front panel near the DUT and increase the efficiency of the testing process.

SDA 7 Zi serial data analysers are based on the WavePro 7 Zi Series oscilloscope but are equipped with double the standard memory to capture more unit intervals in the eye diagram and an enhanced high speed serial pattern trigger that operates on up to 80bit patterns and at speeds to 3.125Gbit/s on 4 and 6GHz SDAs.

Cable length effects can cause distortion of measurements in serial data signals.

With the new cable de-embed feature, cable distortion effects are removed.

Another new analysis feature, IsoBER, plots lines of constant bit error rate (BER) directly on acquired eye pattern.

Designers can now understand the receiver sampling margin right on the eye diagram and see the direct correlation of sampling margin with bit error rate.

These innovations come standard in the new SDA 700Zi analysers along with the unique and heralded four simultaneous views of eye diagram, time interval error, bathtub curve and jitter histogram.

LeCroy serial data analysers are tuned for compliance testing of Ethernet, USB, PCI Express, Serial ATA, UWB and HDMI and the debug and validation of new designs.

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