TSP #133 - Keysight UXR 110GHz BW, 256GS/s, 10-bit Real-Time Oscilloscope Teardown & Experiments

In this episode Shahriar takes a look at one of the most advanced electrical test and measurement instruments ever created. The Keysight UXR-Series Real-Time Oscilloscope brings 110GHz of analog bandwidth and 256GS/s real-time sampling at 4-channels simultaneously. To make it even more impressive, the entire data-conversion architecture is in 10-bits. This implies that the instruments captures, processes, stores and displays over 10Tb/s of information. Various architectures of state-of-the art oscilloscopes from Keysight, LeCroy and Tektronix are examined and compared against the new real-time architecture of the UXR-Series oscilloscope. The teardown of the front-end 110GHz module along with the data acquisition board is presented and analyzed in detail. The instrument showcases a wide range of Keysight technologies implemented in various technologies such as InP, SiGe BiCMOS, 65nm CMOS and 28nm CMOS nodes. In combination with Hyper-Cube memory module, data can be captured at 256GS/S from all 4-channels at the same time. Several variants of the UXR-Series oscilloscope will be available from 13GHz to 110GHz bandwidths. A new calibration probe is also introduced based on the Keysight InP process capable of producing signal edges with of rise/fall times with NIST traceable calibration data. This enables users to perform NIST alignment and bandwidth calibration on site without needing to send the instrument back to Keysight. Several measurements with the scope demonstrates its extraordinarily low noise floor, jitter as well as the capability of the new probe module for instrument calibration. The 110GHz 4-channel variant of the UXR-Series oscilloscope has an MSRP of $1.3 Million US dollars. The Signal Path