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test&measurementZONE Products for the week of July 28, 2008
ZTEC Instruments Says…
300 MHz PXI, PCI, and VXI Oscilloscopes Offer Benchtop Performance for ATE and Portable Test Applications
ZTEC Instruments introduced the ZT4210 series of 300 MHz oscilloscopes in PXI, PCI, and VXI form factors. These oscilloscopes provide the same powerful triggering, acquisition, math, and analysis functions that are commonly found in today's benchtop instruments and in ZTEC's other M-Class oscilloscopes. In fact, the ZT4210 series is designed to replace benchtop oscilloscopes in many ATE, aerospace, defense, and portable test applications. Prices for the ZT4210 series start at $4,450 US.
These powerful modular oscilloscopes are available with 2 channels (ZT4211 PXI, PCI, and VXI) and with 4 channels (ZT4212 VXI only). Key specifications include 300 MHz analog bandwidth, up to 1 GS/s real-time sampling, and up to 256Msamples record length. With its on-board processing, the ZT4210 series calculates over 40 waveform parameters related to a waveform's voltage, time and frequency characteristics. The ZT4210 also comes standard with four calculation channels for performing basic and advanced math on acquired data. Math functions include add, subtract, multiply, integration, differentiation, FFT, histograms, parameter trending and more.
The ZT4210 accepts a wide range of voltage levels, handling up to +/-300 V CAT II direct inputs. With input ranges from 1.25 mV/div to 40 V/div (10 vertical divisions) the ZT4210 covers an extremely wide range of voltage levels without the need for external signal conditioning (attenuators, probes, etc.). This is important in automated and remote test applications where it is difficult or impossible to quickly add/remove external conditioning. Free instrument drivers from ZTEC help users easily integrate the ZT4210 series into ATE and embedded test systems. Drivers and programming support are available for key programming environments including LabVIEW, LabWindows/CVI, MATLAB, COM, Visual C/C++, Visual Studio and others.
Additionally, ZTEC offers free ZScope control and display software and the ZFind instrument locator and configuration utility. The intuitive ZScope soft front panel application, with the look and feel of a benchtop instrument, gives users complete control of the instrument and displays acquired waveforms, math waveforms, and waveform parameter data. ZFind enables users to easily identify what ZTEC instruments are installed on the current host and even share instruments with other computers. ZFind also lets users send SCPI commands to connected instruments and read back information from those instruments.
EN-Genius Says…
There are quite a few companies offering plug-in digitizers and oscilloscopes for PCs. Firms include the likes of the Big Boys such as Agilent, Geotest, Aeroflex, National Instruments, and Gage, as well as second-tier companies such as ZTEC Instruments, Measurement Computing, Pickering, Adlink, KineticSystems, and Advantech, to name a few.
ZTEC's latest ZT4210 Series of 300-MHz scope plug-ins follow on the heels of successful ZTEC predecessors, most notably its ZT4610 line of digital storage oscilloscopes. The ZT4610 DSOs were comparable in performance to benchtop scopes from Tektronix, Agilent Technologies, and LeCroy. So too are the ZT4210 Series cards. An in-depth perusal of the data sheet will confirm this.
The ZTEC combo of hardware and software lets these latest self-calibrating plug-ins make myriad measurements under Windows 2000, Windows XP, or Vista. In addition to the PCI versions, you can order PXI compatible cards that fit PXI Standard and PXI Express Hybrid slots.
For its VXI-compatible version, ZTEC’s interface accommodates the VXI Command Interface A16 message-based servant, and is SCPI (Standard Commands for Programmable Instrumentation) compatible.
Not mentioned in ZTEC's press statement is that you can also order these plug-ins for LAN systems. The LAN cards are half-width 1U-sized. The LAN interface works in 10/100-Mbit/s Ethernet environments as well as USB (Universal Serial Bus) 2.0 mini-networks.
Fast Hardware
Regardless of how these products communicate with your PC, ZT4210 hardware can acquire data at 10 ksample/s to as fast as 500 Msample/s, in non-interleaved realtime modes. The cards can operate faster, too, at up to 1 Gsample/s interleaved in realtime, and up to a very fast 100 Gsample/s in an interpolated or equivalent-time mode.
Once a signal is acquired, measurement is based on the entire waveform, or gated by time or points, frequency, or cursor positions. With that you can perform mainstream scope functions, such as measuring a signal amplitude, or revealing its ac rms values. You could also calculate average readings and cycle averages. You can also rapidly determine cycle frequency and period. The scopes also reveal cycle rms values, dc values, and duty cycles.
As you might expect, you can also measure frequency, and high, low, maximum, mid, minimum, and peak-to-peak values, as well as determine phase relationships. Beyond that, ZTEC ZT4210 scopes can indicate fall times, the number of falling edges on a waveform, fall crossing times, fall overshoot points, and fall pre-shoot.
For pulses, these instruments can rapidly show pulse widths (both positive and negative), and rise times, and show the number of rising edges, rise crossing times, rise overshoot, and rise pre-shoot.
Unusual Revelations
You can also determine other factors derived from acquired signals, some of which are unusual. For example, you can extract information about a signal SFDR (spurious-free dynamic range), SINAD (signal-to-noise and distortion), SNR (signal-to-noise ratio), converted ENOB (effective number of bits), and THD (total harmonic distortion).
Once these measurements are taken, ZTEC software can maintain up to four measurement lists, storing up to eight measurements performed upon acquisition. A measurement statistics history buffer of past measurement data is also stored in a so-called Calculate channel. Number crunching capabilities support 8-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit waveform formats as well as 32-bit and 64-bit floating-point calculations, for Intel or Motorola byte ordering.
Handling 512-ksample waveforms, the Calculate channel can do math with 32-bit resolution. Calculate functions include addition, subtraction, and multiplication. You can also copy, invert, and do integral and derivative functions. Limit testing and mask tests also fall under the purview of the calculate channel. Limit test reporting can include display of maximums, minimums, averages, current values, and pass/fail counts, which is just the ticket in production test applications.
The Calculate functions also let the ZTEC system do frequency and time transforms, generating histograms, and showing measurement histories. The histograms include 65536 bins, for up to 16-bit histogram horizontal resolution.
FFT (fast Fourier transform) is done with rectangular windowing, Hamming, Hanning, Blackman, and flattop functions. FFT data formats show linear or log magnitude, as well as phase, both real and imaginary. The system will also do time-transform digital IIR (infinite impulse response) filtering.
PC Software Fun
As briefly mentioned in the press release, the ZScope M-Class software is key to making broad measurement capability a working reality. Bundled with all versions of its plug-in cards, ZTEC PC-hosted ZScopes mimic the front-panel of typical benchtop scopes. No more than two mouse clicks let you access any oscilloscope functions. You can even practice, using the interface without any hardware connected. If you want to play around a bit before getting to serious applications, a simulation mode lets you view, search, and analyze post-process data.
 In typical use, you can pan and zoom, and save and view literally thousands of acquisitions, using segmented memory. You can also save and recall data and instrument settings, which should prove useful in the hands of less skilled operators, or in labs where these instruments are shared. Auto-setup routines let you configure horizontal and vertical settings, as well as trigger settings.
For those of you who like to innovate, ZTEC also offers the drivers and dev tools needed to program these instruments for custom applications and embedded environments. As mentioned in its press release, you can use these tools with a variety of languages, ranging from C to National Instruments' graphical LabVIEW. You can also use LabWindows/CVI, COM, Visual Studio, and The Mathworks MATLAB. ZTEC provides instrument drivers for Windows as well as Linux 2.6.x.
With pricing starting well below $5000, ZTEC’s latest 300-MHz plug-in scopes should find a home in ATE racks as well as where more expensive benchtop scopes are typically deployed.
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