Agilent Oscilloscopes Enable Record Interface Rates, ECOC 2010 Papers Give Details

The wide band and measurement accuracy of the oscilloscopes in this configuration made it possible to more than double interface rates demonstrated just a year ago. In addition to the highest true analog bandwidth, Infiniium 90000 X-Series scopes have the highest effective number of bits -- more than 5.5 -- and the lowest inter-scope skew of less than 0.5 ps (standard deviation).

None of these breakthrough measurements was possible before the advent of the 90000 X-Series oscilloscopes, said Jay Alexander, general manager and vice president of Agilent's oscilloscopes business. Our R&D investments ensured the 90000 X-Series oscilloscopes offered the highest real-time scope measurement accuracy. This oscilloscope technology is ideal for digital oscilloscope applications and clearly well suited for the experimentation at more than 400-Gb/s that is necessary for future optical network development.

Two papers accepted at ECOC 2010 illustrate the breakthrough interface technologies and describe how the team achieved the world's fastest interface rates across a variety of configurations. The papers were jointly written with a research team led by Dr. Peter Winzer and others from Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs. The experiments relied on state-of-the-art modulation and detection systems, data analysis from Bell Labs and the true analog performance of the Agilent Infiniium 90000 X-Series oscilloscope.

* Generation and 1,200-km Transmission of 448-Gb/s ETDM 56-Gbaud PDM 16-QAM using a Single I/Q Modulator, P. J. Winzer, A. H. Gnauck, S. Chandrasekhar, S. Draving, J. Evangelista, and B. Zhu.
* Single Coherent Detection of a 606-Gb/s CO-FDM Signal with 32-QAM Subcarrier Modulation Using 4x 80-Gsamples/s ADCs, Xiang Liu, S. Chandrasekhar, P. J. Winzer, S. Draving, J. Evangelista, N. Hoffman, B. Zhu, and D. W. Peckham.

Abstracts of the papers can be found on the ECOC 2010 website at www.ecoc2010.org. Additional information on Agilent's experiment setup can be found in the application note, Four Channel 90000 X-Series >20 GHz System.

The Agilent 90000 X-Series oscilloscopes, the world's fastest real-time oscilloscopes, were introduced in April 2010. The 90000 X-Series scopes are engineered for 32-GHz true-analog bandwidth, the industry's highest real-time scope measurement accuracy, the industry's only 30-GHz oscilloscope probing system, and the industry's first application-specific measurement software. These oscilloscopes are able to deliver the highest measurement accuracy because they offer the highest true analog bandwidth (32 GHz), the lowest oscilloscope noise floor (2.04 mV at 50 mV/div, 32 GHz), and the lowest jitter measurement floor (150 fs).