Tektronix PAM4 Optical Analysis Solution for Real-time Oscilloscopes Streamlines Validation Challenges

Tektronix, a leading worldwide provider of measurement solutions, today introduced the new DPO7OE1, a calibrated optical probe and analysis software for use with real-time oscilloscopes. It is optical reference receiver (ORR) compliant for 28-GBaud PAM4 applications and supports IEEE/OIF-CEI standard specific measurements. This new solution complements Tektronix’ optical PAM4 analysis tools for sampling oscilloscopes, giving design teams efficient test solutions for all stages of the optical transmitter workflow.

Based on real-time oscilloscopes like the DPO70000SX, this new offering allows R&D and system engineers to more easily troubleshoot their optical devices by adding powerful debug capabilities: software clock recovery for PAM4 and NRZ, triggering, error detection, and capture time correlated or contiguous record of a signal.

One company that understands the value of an optical PAM4 solution based on real-time oscilloscopes is Maxim Integrated, a manufacturer of high-speed, low-power optical devices for data center applications.

“Advanced optical modulation formats like PAM4 require system testing with both sampling and real-time oscilloscopes,” said Jan Filip director of advanced R&D at Maxim Integrated. “The new real-time oscilloscope-based solution allows us to provide critical debugging feedback to the development teams and to emulate advanced optical receiver systems using offline Matlab algorithms. Tektronix offers the best performing real-time oscilloscope detection solution to our optical and PAM4 test requirements and is our strategic partner for advanced measurement platforms.”

Applications & Analysis Packages

The DPO7OE1 offers 33 GHz optical bandwidth for 28-GBaud PAM4 debug applications. It can also be used for legacy NRZ applications. Analysis packages support standard optical measurements including ER, AOP, OMA, eye height and eye width as well as PAM4 IEEE and OIF-CEI standard specific measurements including TDECQ