 28.05.2013 Pico Technology continues to push the limits of PC oscilloscope design. For the first time in an oscilloscope, Pico Technology have used reconfigurable ADCs to offer a choice of 8-bit to 16-bit resolutions in a single product.
Flexible resolution
Most digital oscilloscopes gain their high sampling rates by interleaving multiple 8-bit ADCs. Despite careful design, the interleaving process introduces errors that always make the dynamic performance worse than the performance of the individual ADC cores.
The new PicoScope 5000 Series scopes have a significantly different architecture in which multiple high-resolution ADCs can be applied to the input channels in different time-interleaved and parallel combinations to boost either the sampling rate or the resolution.
In time-interleaved mode, the ADCs are interleaved to provide 1 GS/s at 8 bits (see diagram). Interleaving reduces the performance of the ADCs, but the resulting (60 dB SFDR) is still much better than oscilloscopes that interleave 8-bit ADCs. This mode can also provide 500 MS/s at 12 bits resolution.
| Product |
Channels |
Bandwidth |
Sampling Rate |
Buffer Memory |
Resolution (Enhanced) |
|
| PicoScope 5242 |
|
2 + AWG |
60 MHz |
1 GS/s |
32 MS |
8 - 16 bits
(20 bits) |
|
| PicoScope 5442 |
|
4 + AWG |
60 MHz |
1 GS/s |
32 MS |
8 - 16 bits
(20 bits) |
|
| PicoScope 5243 |
|
2 + AWG |
100 MHz |
1 GS/s |
128 MS |
8 - 16 bits
(20 bits) |
|
| PicoScope 5443 |
|
4 + AWG |
100 MHz |
1 GS/s |
128 MS |
8 - 16 bits
(20 bits) |
|
| PicoScope 5244 |
|
2 + AWG |
200 MHz |
1 GS/s |
512 MS |
8 - 16 bits
(20 bits) |
|
| PicoScope 5444 |
|
4 + AWG |
200 MHz |
1 GS/s |
512 MS |
8 - 16 bits
(20 bits) |
|
| 
