XR3 Multi-Scope Acquisition with Infiniium 2026

A single four-channel oscilloscope is usually all it takes to debug a circuit. Automated test in aerospace, defense and manufacturing, and large physics experiments, are a different problem. The device or system under test has an ever-growing number of test points, and finding cause and effect across them means probing those points simultaneously and visualizing them together.

Each four-channel XR3 is 1U high, so channel count scales linearly with rack height. Probes can stay on fixed test points across repeated runs. Use one unit for a small debug task, or the whole synchronized system when a larger event must be seen.

Multi-scope acquisition pays off when the question is not "what did this channel do?" but "what happened across the system at the same time?".

In aerospace and defense ATE racks, the unit under test is rarely a single board. Avionics, communications, radar control and electronic test assemblies are exercised as complete functions, with the test station issuing commands, switching stimulus and monitoring responses across many connectors at once. Each test cycle is a chain of dependent events: a control message starts a function, power rails respond, a timing pulse propagates and an output changes.

Because the trigger loop is closed, the system can trigger on whichever channel first shows the anomaly, whether that is a sagging rail on one scope or a late output on another, and every other channel is captured around that moment. Infiniium 2026 then presents the whole sequence in one view, so engineers can follow it from command to downstream response and separate cause from effect. The 1U form factor also suits legacy rack modernization, adding channels to a crowded automated test rack without a redesign.

On an assembly line, the challenge is applying checks repeatably at many test points and catching faults that appear only in one sequence. A synchronized XR3 system observes more power, control, timing and output signals in the same production cycle. Shared timing relates a failed limit on one channel to earlier behavior elsewhere.

Researchers capture the electrical signals that detectors, photodiodes and laser systems produce during beam or particle events. These events are brief, arrive in bursts and are hard to repeat, so measuring one detector group at a time loses the relationships that explain the experiment. An XR3 multi-scope system spreads channels across detector outputs, laser timing markers, pulse-generation signals and diagnostics.

On a modern digital board, signal integrity and power integrity are the same problem viewed from two sides. A DDR data eye closes because a rail droops during a burst of activity, a PCIe link throws errors when a regulator’s switching noise couples into the reference, or a processor’s load step pulls a rail below its tolerance for a few hundred nanoseconds. Capturing the high-speed bus on one scope and the rails on another, at different times, breaks exactly the correlation needed to prove the link.

Every multi-scope setup uses the same two connections. The 10 MHz reference runs one way down the chain and is left open at the last unit. The trigger path forms a closed loop: each Trigger Out feeds the next Trigger In, and the last unit’s Trigger Out returns to the first unit’s Trigger In.

Connect its 10 MHz Ref Out to XR3 #2 10 MHz Ref In, and continue Ref Out to Ref In down the chain. Leave the last unit’s 10 MHz Ref Out open. Connect XR3 #1 Trigger Out to XR3 #2 Trigger In, and continue Trigger Out to Trigger In down the chain.

Connect its 10 MHz Ref Out to XR3 #1 10 MHz Ref In, and continue Ref Out to Ref In through the XR3 units. Leave the last XR3’s 10 MHz Ref Out open. Connect the XR8 Trigger Out to XR3 #1 Trigger In, and continue Trigger Out to Trigger In through the XR3 units.

Complete all cabling before powering on the instruments. Then connect every instrument to the network (see the LAN prerequisite in the setup section).

Infiniium 2026 is the operator’s single workspace for the system. It runs on the host: a PC in Configuration A, or the XR8 in Configuration B. Setup follows the same order for both: add each XR3 to the trigger chain, connect to it by IP address, check cabling and skew, then turn on channels.

The XR3 units transfer acquisition data to Infiniium 2026 over the network. Put all XR3 units and the host on the same network. Use a direct Ethernet connection with static IP, or DHCP through a LAN switch or router.

Click (+) at the bottom of the left toolbar. In Signal Management, click (+) next to Channels. Drag the InfiniiVision Oscilloscope icon into the first empty slot in the trigger chain.

Under Instrument Configuration › Connection, enter the XR3 IP address in the VISA Address field. The unit’s channels appear in Signal Management when the connection succeeds.

Repeat Steps 1 and 2 for each additional unit, in the same order as the cable chain. Open Connection Diagram and confirm that the ports it shows for each unit (previous unit, next unit, and the end-of-chain connections) match your cabling. Note the default cable skew Infiniium has applied between instruments.

Each XR3 appears with its own channel set. Click a channel to turn it on, and repeat for each channel you want to display. Channels from all units share one timebase and one display.

Do this once after setup and again after any change to cables, probes, instruments or fixtures. Feed one common fast-edge signal to one channel on every instrument. Trigger on the edge and zoom the timebase until the edge spans most of the screen.

Multiple 1U XR3 oscilloscopes, locked to a shared 10 MHz reference and joined by a closed trigger loop, operate as one time-coherent instrument, adding four analog channels per rack unit. Any channel on any unit can be the trigger source, and an XR8 can lead the chain where high-speed serial signals must be captured alongside power rails.