Testing

USB-based oscilloscopes are becoming increasingly popular. Performance enhancements and new levels of functionality mean these instruments are becoming more attractive to test engineers. They can be used in a range of applications from OEM production lines right through to academic research. In the following article, the basic structure of a USB scope will be detailed, along with its various operational ...

Cambridge Graphene Centre (CGC) has seen the installation of an atomic force microscope (AFM) supplied by Agilent Technologies. Graphene is the second layer of carbon atoms that are sp2 covalently bonded into a honeycomb lattice. Much of graphene’s appeal comes from its unique electronic properties that may one day make super-high-speed devices a reality. Agilent’s 5600LS AFM has scanning microwave microscopy capabilities for electrical ...

Power measurement was once thought the worthy but dull end of the test market. Not any more can power measurement be called “dullsville”. Product announcements in this week’s magazine by Tektronix and Yokogawa threaten to glam-up the trusty power meter on your test bench. Take the Electronics Weekly Salary Survey 2014 » Power design has always been an important part ...

Agilent Technologies has introduced a debugging tool to help with DDR memory pre-compliance testing. “The tool allows designers to navigate to areas of interest for further analysis and collect and analyse statistical data,” said the firm. “The DDR3 and LPDDR3 debug tool runs on Infiniium 9000A, 90000A, 90000 X- and 90000 Q-Series oscilloscopes.” Aimed at engineers who work in the ...

EthermView is a liquid crystal thermographic analysis system that provides accurate optical temperature measurements of active PCBs and components using the colour response of thermochromic liquid crystals. Developed by Advanced Thermal Solutions (ATS) of Massachusetts, the system includes a colour camera (Firewire interface) with illumination for macroscopic inspection of boards and components. “In contrast to infrared thermography systems, the ethermView ...

XJTAG is hosting a free boundary scan workshop on Tuesday 21st January 2014 at the St. John’s Innovation Centre in Cambridge. Targeted at design, test and production engineers, the sessions will provide an introduction to JTAG boundary scan and the IEEE 1149.x standard. “In an age where chip and board geometries continue to shrink, working at higher speeds and greater ...

Pico Technology has cut the size of its 2000 series of 200MHz PC oscilloscopes by almost 80%, to around the size of a passport, in a project that started as a challenge between engineers. “They are as thin as can they can possibly be made and still have BNC connectors,” Pico MD Alan Tong told Electronics Weekly. Pico’s scopes connect ...

Who should calibrate measurement instruments? When? And how? Users’ questions to do with calibration are remarkably easy to answer – provided you do not think about them too deeply. But as this article will show, there are layers of complexity underlying the issue of calibration, and they merit concentrated examination by any user who has a commercial requirement for traceable ...

Tektronix has introduced an oscilloscope with up to 2GHz bandwidth, 10Gsample/s sample rate, and 50Msample record length as standard. “A number of trends are driving change in the mid-range oscilloscope segment. Faster-speed serial buses such as USB 2.0, USB HSIC [inter-chip USB] and Ethernet are increasingly being used in embedded designs,” said the firm. “These in turn introduce design challenges ...

Avago has announced an optical fibre strain sensing method for industrial applications, based on plastic fibre and a patented optical phase interrogation (OPI) technique. “The sensing solution enables plastic optical fibre to be used as a high-precision strain sensor on par with current fibre Bragg grating strain sensors for applications including wind-blade load management and structural health monitoring,” said the ...