With the release of the first ASIC-based zone triggering in the industry, Rohde & Schwarz expands the breadth of its oscilloscope offerings. The MXO series can now provide the fastest zone trigger update rate in the world, with up to 600.000 waveforms per second and a blind time between trigger events of less than 1.45 seconds, thanks to this innovative methodology.
Compared to competitive zone triggering offers, it is up to 10,000 faster. Where traditional triggering does not offer the necessary flexibility, MXO oscilloscopes can precisely isolate events because of the innovative ASIC-based zone triggering.
The first ASIC-based zone triggering in the industry was created by Rohde & Schwarz and is included in the latest MXO series oscilloscopes. The oscilloscopes’ capacity to precisely isolate events that are challenging or impossible to detect with conventional oscilloscope triggers is improved by this added capabilities. Moreover, the implementation of the MXO zone trigger is touted as the fastest in the industry, outpacing competitors by multiple orders of magnitude.
Certain oscilloscope trigger events can be visualized only with difficulty or insufficiently using traditional oscilloscope trigger types, including edge triggering. Conversely, zone triggering enables users to designate one or more zone areas on the instrument’s display in order to establish trigger circumstances.
After checking each acquisition for these conditions, the oscilloscope displays the acquisitions on the screen in order to identify any occurrences that match the graphical conditions. Should an event fail to satisfy the graphical requirements, the waveform is eliminated and not displayed.
For triggering on non-monotonic edges, math waveforms, serial bus patterns, events over several channels, and frequency domain events, zone triggering can be quite useful. Conventional oscilloscope triggers are ineffective for these usage situations.
The world’s first ASIC-based zone triggering system that operates on analog channel signals, math, and spectrum is Rohde & Schwarz’s latest offering.
Philip Diegmann, Vice President Oscilloscopes at Rohde & Schwarz, says: “The next-generation MXO-EP processing ASIC technology developed by Rohde & Schwarz is the foundation of the breakthrough signal visibility and user responsiveness of the MXO series. The chip design was laid out to have further hardware acceleration capabilities enabled down the road. This way we keep providing new functionalities to our oscilloscope customers never before seen in the industry. With MXO zone triggering, users obtain additional triggering capabilities without having to incur significant trigger blind times that historically have diminished the value of software-based zone triggering solutions.”
Users testing and debugging in the frequency domain with an oscilloscope can now draw specified zone areas thanks to the MXO zone triggering. When a specific tone inside these zones surpasses a predetermined power level, the oscilloscope will then engage or trigger. Conversely, users can just sketch a zone for RF pulses or chirps.
The MXO’s free run mode, which allows the oscilloscope to record as quickly as possible without waiting for an edge trigger event, is new to the industry. Combining this with zone triggering can be quite helpful for power integrity tests and EMI troubleshooting.
