N1092A/B/C/D/E DCA-M

Introduction

High accuracy, low cost solutions for optical and electrical waveform analysis including solutions for 20 Gb/s through 53 GBaud, very low noise and jitter, and fast sampling rates for high throughput.

The Keysight Technologies, Inc. N1000 and 86100 digital communication analyzer (DCA) family is recognized as the industry standard for verifying optical transmitter compliance to communications standards. For years engineers have trusted the DCA to provide accurate and easy measurement of digital communication waveforms. The Keysight N1092A/B/C/D/E DCA-M has built on that legacy by using the high-performance elements of both the N1000 and 86100 oscilloscope mainframe acquisition system and the optical and electrical channel hardware of the 861XX and N104X plug-in modules.

Small Form Factor Ideal for Both Manufacturing

and R&D Applications

Unlike the 86100D and N1000A, which use modules to create a waveform analysis system, the N109X are completely integrated instruments built in a small form factor.

Low noise, high-sensitivity calibrated optical reference receivers — compliant to industry standard tolerances — are available for both multimode and single-mode, creating a measurement system with very high dynamic range. Electrical channels are available with 30 GHz and 50 GHz bandwidths.

Controlling the N1092A/B/C/D/E

There are three ways to control the N109X system

• A PC directly connected to the N1092A/B/C/D/E with a USB cable
• An 86100D or N1000A mainframe connected to the N1092A/B/C/D/E with a USB cable. (The mainframe can then be controlled via GPIB or LAN)
• For an automated test system environment, the simplest and preferred method to control the N1092A/B/C/D/E is to connect the primary test system PC to a low-cost modern PC via LAN. The FlexDCA interface resides on the second PC. The second PC is then connected to the N1092A/B/C/D/E via USB. This eliminates most issues of compatibility between an existing test system PC and the N1092A/B/C/D/E hardware and can greatly simplify converting an 86100D system to an N1092A/B/C/D/E system.

The N109X user interface and operating system is identical to the modern FlexDCA interface of the 86100D and N1000A. A user-provided PC running N1010A FlexDCA software controls the N1092A/B/C/D/E over a simple USB 2.0 or 3.0 connection.

System setup

The following guidelines are the PC requirements when connected to the N109X and running the FlexDCA interface for a single channel setup:

• Intel I3 processor or better with 4 GB memory
• Windows 7 (32 or 64 bit)

For a parallel test setup (multiple instruments or multiple channels):

• Intel I5 or better with 8 GB memory
• Windows 7 (64 bit)

The communication API between your system controller and the PC is SCPI over LAN, either VXI-11 or HiSlip. If NI-VISA or IO Libraries are used to communicate with GPIB instruments, the switch to SCPI/LAN is very simple. It is important to note that there is no need to do any USB programming. This is all handled by the FlexDCA interface.