CSA 803C Tektronix Communications Signal Analyzer

The Tektronix CSA 803C Communications Signal Analyzer is the ideal tool for design and evaluation of datacomm/telecomm components, transceiver subassemblies, and transmission systems.

The CSA 803C oscilloscope generates measurement results, not just raw data, with time and voltage histograms, mask testing, and statistical pulse parameter measurements. It provides a communications-tailored measurement set that includes jitter, noise, duty cycle, overshoot, undershoot, extinction ratio and amplitude measurements.

In addition, mask testing of SDH/SONET, Fiber Channel, and other standards simplifies compliance testing. A full color display helps you to discriminate waveform details. A color-graded display mode adds a third dimension - sample density - to your signal acquisitions and analysis. Color hardcopy capabilities allow you to accurately document your measurement results.

The modularity of the instrument lets you choose the right bandwidth sampling head for your application, including the 2.5 GHz high impedance (100 k Ohm), low capacitance (0.475 pF) SD-14 up to 50 GHz with the SD-32.

In addition to its full-function DC-coupled 4.0 GHz trigger (typical), the CSA 803C offers a built-in, AC-coupled 12.5 GHz (typical) prescaler trigger for direct triggering on high-speed data at bit rates such as 9.953 GB/S OC192/STM64.

If you are doing pass/fail testing, your communications standards will benefit from the excellent metastability characteristics of these triggers. Metastability is a condition of all logic devices when they do not latch to a valid ON of OFF logic level, and can occur during trigger events with all sampling oscilloscopes and circuits under test. The raw metastability of the CSA 803C direct trigger is an impressive 5 parts per billion or less, and with Enhanced Triggering ON metastable trigger events are essentially eliminated. This is possible because Enhanced Triggering is capable of detecting possible metastable sample points and discarding them.