August 2014
6
T
est
& M
easurement
The R&S RTE digital oscilloscopes
from Rohde & Schwarz feature
a sampling rate of 5 GS/s,
an acquisition rate of
one million waveforms per second
and good signal fidelity.
A comprehensive set
of measurement and analysis tools
delivers fast results, and the
high-resolution touchscreen
makes the R&S RTE easy to use.
Fast and reliable solutions for
everyday Test & Measurement tasks
The main purpose of a digital oscilloscope
is to measure electrical signals. This can be
simple measurement of signal characteristics
such as frequency and rise and fall times or
complex analysis such as determining the
switching loss of a switched-mode power
supply. The most important factor for users
is that they can rely on the quality of mea-
surement results. Rohde&Schwarz has many
years of experience in the development of
precision test and measurement equipment,
which also benefits the R&S RTE oscilloscope.
The more details an oscilloscope can show, the
higher the probability that the user will be able
to analyze signal faults or important events.
As a prerequisite, the oscilloscope must have
a high time resolution that is based on the
sampling rate. In addition, many applications
also require long record lengths, for instance
for analyzing the data content of serial proto-
cols. In order to maintain a high sampling rate
even for long signal sequences, the oscillo-
scope requires a deep memory. The R&S RTE
offers a powerful combination of sampling
rate and memory depth. A sampling rate of
5 Gsample/s at a memory depth of 10 Msam-
ple is available per channel (can be optionally
expanded to 50 Msample per channel). The
less often signal faults occur, the longer it can
take to detect them. This makes a high acqui-
sition rate critical. The core of the R&S RTE is
an ASIC that was especially designed for par-
allel processing. As a result, the oscilloscope
can acquire, analyze and display more than
one million waveforms per second without
a special acquisition mode. The high acquisi-
tion rate makes it possible to find signal faults
faster and more reliably, effectively shortening
debugging time.
The highly accurate digital trigger system from
Rohde & Schwarz provides precise results.
This unique system determines when a trig-
ger condition is met by directly analyzing the
digitized signal with 500 fs resolution inde-
pendently of the current sampling rate. The
result is very low trigger jitter (< 1ps RMS)
and high measurement accuracy. Thanks to
the digital trigger system, the trigger hyster-
esis can be adjusted to the signal quality. This
ensures, for example, stable triggering even
on extremely noisy signals. The single-core
A/D converter with more than seven effec-
tive bits (ENOB) almost completely elimi-
nates signal distortion. The input sensitivity of
1 mV/div without any bandwidth limitations
ensures that low-amplitude signals can also be
measured with a high degree of accuracy.
The R&S RTE includes many integrated mea-
surement tools for detailed signal analysis.
They range from simple cursor functions to
mask tests to complex mathematical opera-
tions. Many measurement functions such as
histograms, spectrum display and mask tests
are hardware-implemented. This ensures a
very responsive scope and a high acquisition
rate. And statistically conclusive measure-
ment results are available fast. In addition to
the automatic measurements that are cus-
tomary for digital oscilloscopes, the oscillo-
scope offers the QuickMeas function, which is
unique for an instrument in this class. Quick-
Meas simultaneously displays the results of
several measurement functions, which users
select according to their needs. A toolbar at
the upper edge of the screen provides fast
access to this function.
Mask tests reveal whether a specific signal lies
within defined tolerance limits and use sta-
tistical pass/fail evaluation to assess the qual-
ity and stability of a device under test. Mask
creation in the R&S RTE is simply a matter
of pressing a few buttons. The high acqui-
sition rate ensures that mask violations are
detected rapidly and reliably. Signal anoma-
lies and unexpected results are easy to identify
by stopping the measurement if the mask is
violated. Where does the interference pulse in
the signal come from? What caused the loss
of a data bit? The real cause of a problem can
often only be found by looking at the history
of a signal sequence. The R&S RTE history
function always provides access to previously
acquired waveforms. This enables users to
later analyze in detail the measurement data
stored in memory.
The FFT function of the oscilloscope makes
spectral analysis easy. The high acquisition
and postprocessing rate conveys the impres-
sion of a live spectrum, and operation is as
simple as entering the center frequency, span
