Keysight InfiniiVision MSOX3034T RoadTest | Analog Specs & Basic Functionality

6 Sep 2020

1. Specifications
2. Controls and Basic Functionality
3. In-built Training Signal and Demos
- 3.1. Training Signals
- 3.2. Demos

Previous blog posts of my MSOX3034TMSOX3034T Road Test:

Keysight InfiniiVision MSOX3034T RoadTest | Unboxing & First Impressions

Hello Everybody!

It has been about 4 weeks since I received the Keysight InfiniiVision MSOX3034TMSOX3034T mixed signal oscilloscope.

Since then I had the opportunity to start exploring the scope. I read the User's Guide and took a look on the built-in Training Signal and Demo-s of the scope.

But let's take a look on the specifications first!

1. Specifications

Oscilloscopes usually have a lot of numeric values in their specifications:

bandwidth of hundreds of MHz-s
sample rate of billions of samples / second
update rate of hundreds of thousands of updates / second.
megapoints of sample memory

But what each of these values mean? For a somewhat beginner user like me it may not be clear at the first look.

An oscilloscope allows visualizing electrical signals in two dimensions. The horizontal (X) axis represents time, while the vertical (Y) shows voltage.

To do this, the scope passes signal through several components before it is displayed on the screen. The components include the analog front-end, sampler, ADC and the sample memory.

The Keysight InfiniiVision MSOX3034TMSOX3034T is a mixed signal oscilloscope with 4 analog and 16 digital channels.

The analog bandwidth of our model (3034T) is 350 MHz. This means the analog front-end of the oscilloscope can handle signals up to 350 MHz bandwidth with a signal drop of maximum 3dB (70.7%).

The bandwidth of the MSOX3034TMSOX3034T is optionally upgradable to 500MHz (DSOXT3B3T54) or to 1 GHz (DSOXT3B3T104U, return to service center required). Other models from the 3000T series are available from 100 MHz to 1 GHz bandwidth.

The maximum sample rate of the scope is 5 GSa/s. This means the analog signal is sampled 5 billion times each second. When the channels 1 & 2, or 3 & 4 are used together the maximum sample rate is 2.5GSa/s.

Each analog sample is being converted to digital by the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) to a digital value and stored in the sample memory. The ADC resolution of the scope is 8 bits, which means each analog voltage sample is represented as an 8 bit integer.

The sample rate and ADC resolution are the two main factors determining how much detail the displayed signal contains.

The waveform update rate of the scope is 1,000,000 wfms/s, which is one of the highest within the competition. Each oscilloscope has the some dead-time between acquisitions.

The lower this dead-time is, the more waveforms the oscilloscope can capture in a given amount of time. Having higher update rate means we have higher chance to capture infrequent glitches in our signals

Along the scope the other important thing to consider are the probes. The MSOX3034TMSOX3034T comes with four N2843A probes.

The bandwidth of the probes is 500 MHz, which means it can handle signals of up to 500 MHz without attenuating them with more than 3dB.

The attenuation ratio of the probes is 10:1, while the input impedance is 10 MOhm.

The probes come with Probe ID technology, so the scope can automatically detect their model and set attenuation ratio accordingly.

In terms of accessories we get the followings:

Retractable Hook
Ground Leads

Spare Tips
Insulating Caps

Ground Springs
BNC Adapter
Colored Channel Identification Tags

As the accessories came in some pretty flimsy nylon bags, so I decided to store them in a little plastic box instead:

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2. Controls and Basic Functionality

Oscilloscopes, tend to be capable of doing more than just displaying electrical signals in two dimensions. They often have additional features and a lot of input / output connectors and controls on their front panel, and some on their back panel.

The MSO-X 3034T, for example, has the following signal inputs and outputs:

4 x Analog Input channels
16 x Digital Input channels
1 x Arbitrary Waveform Generator Output
2 x Demo Signal Output terminals + 1 x Ground terminal

On the controls side we have a ton of knobs and buttons, divided in different sections. The MSO-X 3034T also has a touch screen, which makes many operation much easier to perform.

Maybe the most important section, IMHO, on the oscilloscope's interface is the one containing the Default Setup and Auto Scale Button. The Default Setup button lets us go back to the default settings of the scope when we mess things up. The Auto Scale helps to find the best horizontal and vertical scale settings based on the connected input signals.

The Horizontal Controls section is common for all 4 channels, and allows us to control X axis (time) settings, including the time / division and delay (offset) settings. The time / division knob (big) allows to zoom in and out on the X / Time axis. The delay (offset) knob (small) adds a positive or negative delay to the signal, compared to the trigger event.

The Vertical Controls section contains the controls for each individual channel. The buttons 1-4 can be used to enable / disable each of the channels. The vertical scale knob (big) controls the volts / division setting for each channel, and allows us to zoom the signal vertically. The vertical position knob (small) allows moving the signal up / down on the screen.

The Trigger sections allows changing triggering mode and thresholds and the acquisition and coupling modes we want to use. The MSOX-3034T supports a bunch of triggering modes including edge, pulse width, rise/fall time or even video, USB, or NFC signals. The acquisition mode can be auto or normal, for the coupling mode we can choose between DC and AC, and there are other useful feature like Noise Reject or HF reject. The Zone button can be used to enable zone triggering, which is an easy was to set up triggering conditions by drawing boxed directly on the signal displayed on the touch screen.

The rest of the controls include:

Run/Stop (or Pause) and Single
- Run / Stop - can be used to pause acquisition, and display the last acquired waveform on the screen
- Single - similar to the Run / Stop, but captures and hold the waveform of the next trigger

Measure & Cursors - a group on controls that allows adding cursors and all kind of automatic measurements to the screen

FFT, Digital and Math - can be used to enable Fast Fourier Transform (FFT), the digital channels and as well as math functions on the input signal

Tools & Settings - can be used to access the settings and different build-in tools of the scope

Contextual Buttons - these can be used to control the setting displayed on the screen above them

Now, as we covered the a basic functions of the oscilloscope, we can use it to inspect some signals.

It's pretty simple. Hook up some probes, turn on channels and hit Auto Scale.

3. In-built Training Signal and Demos

As I not that experienced with oscilloscopes, I decided to start experimenting with the in-built Training Signals and Demos of the scope.

3.1. Training Signals

The scope comes with the following Training Signals.

Sine wave

5 MHz sine wave @ ~2.5 Vpp
can be used to explore the basic functionality of the scope

Sine wave with noise

1 kHz sine wave @ ~2.4 Vpp, with random noise of ~0.5Vpp
can be used to experiment with the Noise Reject, HF Reject, Trigger Holdoff and Waveform Averaging

Two Phase Shifted Sine waves

two 1 kHz sine waves @ 2.4 Vpp with a configurable phase shift between them
can be used to show off features like delta-time, phase shift measurements, and XY time mode

Sine wave with glitch

30 Hz sine wave @ ~2.7 Vpp with a narrow glitch near each positive peak
can be used to experiment with the Peak Detect acquisition mode

Amplitude Modulated Sine Wave

26 kHz sine wave @ ~ 5 Vpp on Demo 1, amplitude modulated signal, ~2 Vpp, 13 MHz carrier on Demo 2
can be used to play with features like deep memory, high res display, and trigger on AM

Frequency Modulated (FM) Burst

Frequency Modulated (FM) Burst from ~100 kHz to ~1 MHz, ~5.0 Vpp, ~600 mV offset
can be used to show Nth Edge Burst triggering and Measurement Trend Visualization

Sine wave with harmonics

1 kHz sine wave @ ~3.5 Vpp with 2 kHz sine wave coupled in
can be used to demonstrate the FFT capabilities of the scope, and as well as zoom features

Noise coupling

1 kHz square wave @ ~1 Vpp, with a ~90 kHz sine wave ~180 mVpp riding on top
can be used to demonstrate the FFT capabilities of the scope to find signal coupling

Single shot

~500ns wide pulse with ringing @ ~3 Vpp, 1.5 V offset
can be used to show single-shot acquisition using either Normal triggering or Single acquisition mode

Clock with glitch

3.6 MHz clock @ ~2 Vpp, 1 V offset, with infrequent glitch (each 1,000,000th clock)
can be used to demonstrate fast waveform update rate, pulse width triggering and mask testing

Runt

digital pulse train with positive and negative runt pulses @ ~2.9 Vpp, 1.5 V offset
can be used to show the benefits of runt triggering, and other features

Setup and Hold

Demo 1 - 6.25 MHz digital clock @ ~ 3.5 Vpp, 1.75 V offset
Demo 2 - Data signal @ ~ 3.5 Vpp, 1.75 V offset
can be used to show of Setup & Hold triggerring

Along the above there a bunch of other training signal, including analog and digital ones. There is even one imitating the KeySight logo:

3.2. Demos

The instrument also comes with a series of Demos:

Debugging Demos
- Debugging Glitch - Finding the coupling signal that causes a glitch
- Isolating Serial Error - Isolating a serial bus error packet/frame
- Stress Testing - Stress testing FlexRay serial bus using the integrated WaveGen
- Identifying Noise - Identifying a noise source
- Mixed Signal - Debug a mixed signal design using the digital channels
- Gated FFT - Validating the frequency hop of an FSK signal using Gated FFT

Application Demos

- Serial Buses
- Advanced Triggering
- Advanced Math
- Power Measurements
- Advanced Features

Auto Demo
- Update Rate
- Zone Trigger
- MSO
- Serial Buses
- Segmented Memory

The Demos were mostly automatic, demonstrating different features of the instrument. The scope does almost all the actions, you just need to press Next time to time.

I would have preferred something more little more interactive. Something like the Training signal section, but with instructions.

Here are some screenshots:
(unfortunately not all the demos allow taking screen captures)