Optical probe overcomes 400G PAM4 debug challenges
A 56GBd 400G PAM4 optical probe has been introduced for use with the Tektronix DPO70000SX Series real-time oscilloscopes. The 59 GHz DPO7OE2 single mode optical probe delivers the performance and advanced debug capabilities designers need to troubleshoot 400G PAM4 components and reduce time to market.
The DPO7OE2 and DPO7OE1 optical probes, along with the full set of Tektronix solutions for 100G/400G optical characterisation and validation, are being demonstrated at the OFC optical networking and communication conference and exhibition in San Diego.
Compared to 100G with NRZ modulation, 400G with PAM4 signalling is far more complex and has substantially increased the time required for design validation, debug and troubleshooting cycles.
Although Tektronix also offers 400G equivalent time (sampling) solutions, the migration from NRZ to PAM4 modulation presents a number of validation and debug challenges that only a real time oscilloscope-based solution is equipped to solve.
Delivering ORR (optical reference receiver) performance for 56GBd PAM4, the DPO7OE2 allows engineers to more easily and quickly troubleshoot optical devices using a complete set of powerful debug capabilities including software clock recovery for PAM4 and NRZ, triggering, error detection, and the ability to capture time correlated or contiguous record of a signal for offline analysis.
It also features optical sensitivity and lowest noise to accommodate low PAM4 signal-to-noise ratio and channel effects.
The DPO7OE2 can also be used for legacy NRZ applications. Analysis packages support standard optical measurements including ER, AOP, OMA, eye height and eye width, as well as PAM4 IEEE and OIF-CEI standard specific measurements including TDECQ.