Video Demo & Experiments with the World's Fastest Oscilloscope! [TheSignalPath]

[Hugoneus]

Experiments and Demo of an Agilent DSA-X 96204Q 160GS/s 62GHz Oscilloscope

In this episode Shahriar demos the world's fastest oscilloscope! The Agilent DSA-X 96204Q offers 160GS/s of conversionrate  with a bandwidth of 62GHz on two dedicated 'RealEdge' channels. It can also provide 80GS/s conversion rate and 33GHz of bandwidth on four simultaneous channels. The unit demoed on this video is equipped with all available options and is valued at over 0.5 million US dollars. The block diagram of various sub-systems of the oscilloscope are presented and the principle operation of the instrument is explained. A 56Gb/s PRBS-15 signal is applied to the scope from a Centellax 2G2T5A (now Agilent N4975A) and the resulting data pattern is examined in real-time. Various scope functions are also presented as well as the capability to observer bit failures at baud-rate using this instrument.

As a second experiment, two 3.125Gb/s PRBS-7 data streams are simultaneously up-convered to 20GHz and 40GHz respectively by using a pair of MITEQ mm-wave DSB tripple balanced mixers and a pair of Avantek 20-40GHz YIG oscillators. The resulting two signals are combined by using a power-combiner and fed to the oscilloscope. The capability of the instrument to act as an ultra-broadband software-defined radio is demonstrated by recovering the the two PRBS sequences simultaneously through DSP post processing. The block diagram of this setup can be downloaded from The Signal Path website.

You can see the video here: [1 Hour & 10 Minutes]
http://thesignalpath.com/blogs/2013/08/13/experiments-and-demo-of-an-agilent-dsa-x-96204q-160gss-62ghz-oscilloscope/

More videos at The Signal Path:
http://thesignalpath.com/blogs/

[olsenn]

Dammit Shahriar; how the hell do you get your hands on all this uber expensive equipment?

[Hugoneus]

Dammit Shahriar; how the hell do you get your hands on all this uber expensive equipment?

Friends in high places!

[Mechatrommer]

awesome! 

[c4757p]

Anybody looking for some sticker shock? Look up the price of the signal generator he was probing with that beast of scope...

I loved the section on the input/ADC. Thanks

[Hugoneus]

Anybody looking for some sticker shock? Look up the price of the signal generator he was probing with that beast of scope...

I loved the section on the input/ADC. Thanks

Well, you've got to connect something expensive to a half-a-million-dollar scope!

[c4757p]

Yeah, I can't think of too many affordable ways to generate a signal worth sticking a 62 GHz scope on!

[Hugoneus]

Yeah, I can't think of too many affordable ways to generate a signal worth sticking a 62 GHz scope on!

What did you think of the second experiment with dual 3.125Gb/s PRBS7 up-conversion to 20GHz and 40GHz bands?

[free_electron]

Ah, that's the twin of the one i used to test the Jim Williams pulse generator. They didn't have that one ready yet. They were working on it, it was still in area51 ...

To see real pictures of that sampler hybrid :

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/agilent-dsa-x93204a-33ghz-80gss-teardown/msg195482/#msg195482

[c4757p]

My scopes just fart and shut off if I suggest using them as radios at any data rate!

I'm amazed that you could recover so much data moving in and out of Fourier transforms like that. Of course, I have pretty much no experience in proper digital signal processing. Is there any chance we could get a look at your MATLAB code? I've used it plenty, but not for this kind of thing. I'd love to see what exactly you're doing.

[Hugoneus]

My scopes just fart and shut off if I suggest using them as radios at any data rate!

I'm amazed that you could recover so much data moving in and out of Fourier transforms like that. Of course, I have pretty much no experience in proper digital signal processing. Is there any chance we could get a look at your MATLAB code? I've used it plenty, but not for this kind of thing. I'd love to see what exactly you're doing.

Going in and out of FFT in Matlab is lossless on it own. Of course, the filtering and shifting things around is not.

I can try posting the Matlab code that I wrote. I would have to add some comments to it so people can follow it.

[Hugoneus]

Ah, that's the twin of the one i used to test the Jim Williams pulse generator. They didn't have that one ready yet. They were working on it, it was still in area51 ...

To see real pictures of that sampler hybrid :

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/agilent-dsa-x93204a-33ghz-80gss-teardown/msg195482/#msg195482

Great, thanks for posting that. I should have asked for the ADC module also. I remember holding it in my hand while it was in development. At the time, 80GS/s was mind blowing.

[dr.diesel]

Great video!

But for $500k you only get crappy microwave pop buttons?

[Lukas]

http://www.microwavejournal.com/articles/9838-inp-hbt-chipset-enabling-high-bandwidth-real-time-oscilloscope-architecture There's some fairly in-depth description of how the sampler works.

http://poulton.net/ This Guy seems to be one of the engineers behind these super fast ADCs.

BTW: Lecroy claims to have 100 GSas/s realtime: http://teledynelecroy.com/100ghz/

[Hugoneus]

http://www.microwavejournal.com/articles/9838-inp-hbt-chipset-enabling-high-bandwidth-real-time-oscilloscope-architecture There's some fairly in-depth description of how the sampler works.

http://poulton.net/ This Guy seems to be one of the engineers behind these super fast ADCs.

BTW: Lecroy claims to have 100 GSas/s realtime: http://teledynelecroy.com/100ghz/

Thanks for posting the articles.

I tried to invite Poulton to write a paper on ultra-highspeed ADCs for CSICS this year, unfortunately he was not able to participate.

As for LeCroy, I will believe it when I see it. I used their current >60GHz scope and did not find its performance to match that of Agilent. They use digital bandwidth interleaved technology and I could not get very good results for viewing high-bandwidth signals which spans multiple spectral bands. But competition is always good!

[branadic]

Video Demo & Experiments with the World's Fastest Oscilloscope!

Wasn't it Teledyne LeCroy having a much faster scope with 100GHz bandwidth and 240 GS/s?

http://www.elektronikpraxis.vogel.de/messen-und-testen/articles/413028/

[Hugoneus]

Video Demo & Experiments with the World's Fastest Oscilloscope!

Wasn't it Teledyne LeCroy having a much faster scope with 100GHz bandwidth and 240 GS/s?

http://www.elektronikpraxis.vogel.de/messen-und-testen/articles/413028/

Not production and not true real-time sampling. It is block down-conversion and DSP combining, same as their 65G scope.

[DavidDLC]

I really enjoyed the video, that is some serious stuff right there.

I started to look at the video and I just want to keep looking until the end. ( Which I did )

Good work !

David.

[Lukas]

BTW: Lecroy claims to have 100 GSas/s realtime: http://teledynelecroy.com/100ghz/

s/Sa/Hz/ ...

[c4757p]

But for $500k you only get crappy microwave pop buttons?

I don't think that's the sort of button they're using here. They are just recessed.

[dr.diesel]

But for $500k you only get crappy microwave pop buttons?

I don't think that's the sort of button they're using here. They are just recessed.

Perhaps, but you can hear them popping, over the fans even!  My G-mas microwave, 80s calculators, Speak and Spell etc.

[Hugoneus]

Update: It is possible that the RealEdge modules do not perform THA functions but rather block down-conversion. In this case, each of the 80GS/s acquisition boards digitizes 32GHz worth of bandwidth and recombining is done in DSP. This is similar to the method LeCroy employs in their scopes.

I have added a note to the video as well.

[dr.diesel]

How is the teardown video coming?

[Hugoneus]

How is the teardown video coming?

Ha! Sadly, not possible... It was very tempting, especially after the second beer.

[dr.diesel]

How is the teardown video coming?

Ha! Sadly, not possible... It was very tempting, especially after the second beer.

I'll PM you my address, I'll get it apart before the Agilent hitmen get here!