Spectrum GmbH DN6.22x series LXI digitisers

The Spectrum GmbH DN6.22x series LXI digitisers are designed to simplify multichannel high-frequency signal acquisition and analysis.

The products offer versions with 12, 16, 20 and 24 channels, with each channel capable of sampling electronic signals at rates up to 1.25 GS/s. The top-of-the-line series increases performance by allowing up to 12 channels to sample at 2.5 GS/s or 6 channels at 5 GS/s.

The products are complete instruments that include all the tools necessary to capture, digitise and analyse electronic signals. Simply connect the instruments to a host computer and start up SBench 6 software.

The software has a host of built-in features for waveform display, data analysis and documentation. Acquired and analysed waveforms can be stored and exported to other devices or other software programs in a variety of formats such as MATLAB, ASCII, binary and wave.

Each channel of the digitisers features its own analog-to-digital converter (ADC), large acquisition memory (1 GS/ch) and independent signal conditioning circuitry. The ADCs are clocked synchronously to ensure that interchannel timing measurements can be made with the best possible accuracy as well as maintaining a constant phase relationship.

Front-end amplifiers allow input signals to be correctly scaled, so that the digitisers can utilise the ADC’s complete 8-bit dynamic range. Programmable full scale ranges (into 50 Ω termination) go from ±200 mV up to ±2.5 V or optionally from ±40 mV up to ±500 mV. The flexible signal conditioning also includes AC/DC coupling and programmable input offset.

The products are matched with amplifiers that deliver over 500 MHz of bandwidth, while the DN6.225 models increase this to 1.5 GHz. The combination of fast sampling rate, wide bandwidth and long acquisition memory enables the digitisers to capture long, complex, high-frequency signals. It also makes it possible to characterise and measure fast events that go down into the nano- and subnanosecond timing ranges.