Agilent Technologies Introduces Precision Waveform Analyzer Providing Industry-Best Performance in Oscilloscope Solutions

Module Allows Accurate Measurements of High-Speed Serial Bus Signals

SANTA CLARA, Calif.-Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE: A) today introduced a precision waveform analyzer designed specifically for engineers involved in design verification and validation of high-speed electrical communications systems and components. With industry-best residual jitter well below 100 femtoseconds and channel bandwidths to 35 GHz, users can be confident that they are seeing the true performance of their signals. This new plug-in module is the latest addition to the Agilent 86100C DCA-J product family.

Measurement setup is made easy with integrated instrumentation-grade hardware clock recovery. This allows the Agilent 86108A to trigger directly from a single-ended or differential data signal, eliminating the need for a separate trigger input. The integrated triggering system functions even in the presence of spread-spectrum clocking, allowing accurate signal analysis on components and systems used for serial busses such as PCI Express(r) and SATA. The on-board phase detector enables a simple and accurate technique to determine PLL bandwidth on devices with either clock or data inputs and outputs.

“The high-speed engineering community has always looked to Agilent for significant innovations in sampling scope technology,” said Jay Alexander, vice president and general manager of Agilent’s oscilloscope business. “It is rare to find the combination of ’highest precision’ and ’easiest to use’ in the same measurement tool.”

Benefits of the Agilent 86108A precision waveform analyzer include:

* lowest intrinsic jitter, which provides the most accurate measurement waveforms;
* internal high-gain clock recovery, allowing for easy measurement setup and accurate analysis of signals with spread-spectrum clocking;
* new triggering architecture, allowing simple connection schemes and eliminating the sampling delay that has historically corrupted jitter measurements made with a sampling scope; and
* an internal phase detector that enables accurate measurements of PLL bandwidth, jitter transfer and jitter/phase noise spectrum.

The Agilent 86108A will be shown for the first time at DesignCon in Santa Clara, Calif., Feb. 4-7, 2008, Booth 305.

U.S. Pricing and Availability

The Agilent 86108A precision waveform analyzer is available now, with prices starting at $85,000. Further information about the Agilent 86108A is available at www.agilent.com/find/dca.