For applications where fast electronic signals in the GHz range need to be remotely acquired and analyzed Spectrum Systementwicklung GmbH has extended its digitizerNETBOX series of LXI based instruments and released eight new models. Available with two, four or eight fully synchronous channels the new units feature sampling rates up to 5 GS/s, bandwidth in excess of 1.5 GHz and on-board acquisition memory up to 8 GSamples. This combination makes the digitizers suitable for capturing long complex high-frequency signals and for characterizing fast timing events that go down to the nanosecond and sub-nanosecond ranges.
Fully LXI compliant, the digitizerNETBOX products allow remote control and data transfer over fast GBit Ethernet. Connect them directly to a Notebook or PC, or in fact to anywhere on a company LAN, and automated data acquisition is said to become easy. Offering advantages in measurement speed, flexibility, size and channel density the products can be used to replace conventional bench instruments such as oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, multi-meters, counters, timers and older generation digitizer products.
The digitizerNETBOX instruments include Spectrum’s powerful SBench 6 software that allows full instrument control, graphical display, data storage and analysis. The program offers both oscilloscope and transient recording modes, including continuous data streaming.
A special feature of SBench 6 is the segmented acquisition view which is ideal for capturing burst type signals together with all the associated trigger time stamping information. SBench 6 can be used to measure parameters, perform FFT’s and run a variety of different math and processing functions such as filtering, averaging and histograms. Data can be exported into a number of formats such as ASCII, Wave and MATLAB, making it easy to use the digitizerNETBOX products with a variety of third party software tools.
Customers who want to control the digitizerNETBOX units with their own software can use the proven Spectrum drivers (available for Windows and Linux) that are included as part of the product. A set of standard programming examples illustrates the main signal capture functions and support is provided for Visual C++, Borland C++, Gnu C++, LabVIEW, Visual Basic, VB.NET, C#, J#, Python and Delphi code.
Of the eight different models the DN2.225-08 offers top of the range performance with eight fully synchronized channels each with over 1.5 GHz of bandwidth and a separate ADC capable of running at 1.25 GS/s. For faster sampling the DN2.225-08 enables users to combine channels to have four running at 2.5 GS/s or two at 5 GS/s. For cost effective solutions models are also available with 500 MHz bandwidth and lower maximum sampling rates.
All the digitizers are equipped with fully calibrated front-end signal conditioning circuits that offer input ranges from ±200 mV up to ±2.5 V full scale. Further signal conditioning can also be provided through the use of a wide range of optional amplifiers. Signal conditioning allows signals to be scaled correctly so that they use the full 8-bit dynamic range of the digitizer, optimizing measurement accuracy and resolution.
The digitizerNETBOX DN2.22x series instruments are shipped factory tested with SBench6-Pro software, support drivers and a two year manufacturer’s warranty and technical support, including software and firmware updates, is available free of charge. For more information visit: www.spectrum-instrumentation.com.