Agilent Technologies Inc. had just very recently revealed their technological advancement in the next-generation, high-bandwidth oscilloscopes—the new chipset that could make possible the production of oscilloscopes with true analog bandwidths greater than 16 GHz.
This new chipset will be using indium phosphide (InP) technology. The company claims that this would prove to be better than digital signal processing (DSP) and frequency domain interleaving, or also known as digital bandwidth interleaving or DBI) other bandwidth-enhancing techniques because it doesn’t cause a lot of commotion that hampers the performance and measurement accuracy of the oscilloscopes, a concern that usually comes with the aforementioned techniques. It is somehow also better than the silicon process technologies which are commonly used in the present, which are not truly able to extend the analog bandwidth above 16 GHz range.
The InP technology is said to actually enhance the capacities of the company's InGaP HBT (Heterojunction Bipolar Transistor) IC technology, yielding high-frequency capability with transistor switching frequencies up to 200 GHz. Aside from that, this technology also has better material properties than that with the gallium arsenide (GaAs) process formerly used by Agilent. This is because InP technology gives higher saturated and peak electron velocities, higher thermal conductivity, lower surface recombination velocity, and higher breakdown electric field, which makes the expansion of the present limits in true analog bandwidths.
It is also said that the InP technology enables oscilloscopes to have significantly flatter response at high frequencies, higher measurement accuracy because of the low-noise, nonconductive substrate, and higher reliability due to lower power consumption than what we have today.
It seems that the 16 GHz limit would just be the first step for the company. According to Jay Alexander, vice president and general manager of Agilent's oscilloscope organization, "Our first oscilloscope family offering this new high-speed chipset will start at 16 GHz bandwidth." They would be introducing this high bandwidth family in the first half of 2010.
This new chipset will be using indium phosphide (InP) technology. The company claims that this would prove to be better than digital signal processing (DSP) and frequency domain interleaving, or also known as digital bandwidth interleaving or DBI) other bandwidth-enhancing techniques because it doesn’t cause a lot of commotion that hampers the performance and measurement accuracy of the oscilloscopes, a concern that usually comes with the aforementioned techniques. It is somehow also better than the silicon process technologies which are commonly used in the present, which are not truly able to extend the analog bandwidth above 16 GHz range.
The InP technology is said to actually enhance the capacities of the company's InGaP HBT (Heterojunction Bipolar Transistor) IC technology, yielding high-frequency capability with transistor switching frequencies up to 200 GHz. Aside from that, this technology also has better material properties than that with the gallium arsenide (GaAs) process formerly used by Agilent. This is because InP technology gives higher saturated and peak electron velocities, higher thermal conductivity, lower surface recombination velocity, and higher breakdown electric field, which makes the expansion of the present limits in true analog bandwidths.
It is also said that the InP technology enables oscilloscopes to have significantly flatter response at high frequencies, higher measurement accuracy because of the low-noise, nonconductive substrate, and higher reliability due to lower power consumption than what we have today.
It seems that the 16 GHz limit would just be the first step for the company. According to Jay Alexander, vice president and general manager of Agilent's oscilloscope organization, "Our first oscilloscope family offering this new high-speed chipset will start at 16 GHz bandwidth." They would be introducing this high bandwidth family in the first half of 2010.
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