News

10 December 2009

 

Agilent introduces InP chipset for oscilloscopes with 16GHz bandwidth

Agilent Technologies Inc of Santa Clara, CA, USA has introduced a front-end chipset that uses indium phosphide (InP) technology that should enable it to deliver oscilloscopes in first-half 2010 that offer true analog bandwidths greater than 16GHz.

Engineers working with high-speed serial data links such as USB, SATA or PCI Express use oscilloscopes to measure jitter and other parameters to ensure compliance to industry standards for interoperability. In the next few years, as data rates extend beyond 8.5Gb/s, engineers will need oscilloscopes with true analog bandwidths greater than 16GHz. In addition, the upcoming IEEE 803.2ba 40/100G standard will drive the need for high-quality, real-time signal analysis capabilities to 16GHz and beyond.

Agilent says that other vendors claim they can achieve higher bandwidths using bandwidth-enhancing techniques such as digital signal processing (DSP) and frequency domain interleaving (sometimes referred to as digital bandwidth interleaving, or DBI). However, the additional noise and jitter generated with these techniques can interfere significantly with an oscilloscope's measurement accuracy and impact its frequency response, claims the firm.

Silicon process technologies that are commonly used today are unable to achieve true analog bandwidths above 16GHz, says Agilent. Other vendors are using silicon technologies with transistor switching frequencies in the 100GHz range, but this frequency limit presents significant barriers to delivering higher true analog bandwidths. Agilent says that its investment in the InP process extends the capabilities of its indium gallium phosphide (InGaP) heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) IC technology, enabling high-frequency capability with transistor switching frequencies up to 200GHz. InP technology offers the same capability without sacrificing the reliability and manufacturability of Agilent instrumentation, says the firm.

Since InP process technology also has superior material properties compared with Agilent’s prior-generation gallium arsenide (GaAs) process, it provides higher saturated and peak electron velocities, higher thermal conductivity, lower surface recombination velocity, and higher breakdown electric field, enabling true analog bandwidths to be pushed to new limits.

In addition, InP technology provides the following measurement benefits compared with other technologies currently available:

• significantly flatter response at high frequencies;
• higher measurement accuracy because of the low-noise, non-conductive substrate; and
• higher reliability due to lower power consumption.

Agilent says that it implemented an in-house fabrication facility to gain ultimate control of precision in the InP process, with its expertise in microwave semiconductor technology proving key in tuning it to deliver the specifications for real-time oscilloscopes, says Bob Witte, VP of Agilent’sTechnology Leadership Organization.

The InP technology is already available in the J-BERT N4903B high-performance serial BERT, which offers complete jitter tolerance testing, and in the N4916B de-emphasis signal converter, delivering pulse fidelity to rise times faster than 20ps and offering headroom for future needs.

“Our first oscilloscope family offering this new high-speed chipset will start at 16GHz bandwidth,” says Jay Alexander, VP & general manager of Agilent’s oscilloscope organization. “These new products will complement our existing lineup of oscilloscopes and ensure that we can meet upcoming customer needs in a timely manner.” Agilent currently offers high-performance Infiniium 90000 Series oscilloscopes with bandwidths up to 13GHz.

Search: Agilent InP

Visit: www.agilent.com/find/scopes