LeCroy Enhances USB 3.0 Exerciser to enable Receiver and Transmitter Electrical Testing

LeCroy Corporation, a worldwide leader in serial data test solutions, has extended the capabilities of the Voyager USB 3.0 Protocol Verification system to help enable receiver and transmitter physical layer testing. USB 3.0 design teams tasked with PHY layer compliance verification can now combine the Voyager exerciser with a high-speed oscilloscope to allow early characterization of device electrical layer performance.

LeCroy’s acclaimed Voyager USB 3.0 verification platform is designed to transparently monitor protocol traffic between USB devices. The system can also emulate a wide range of USB 3.0 behaviors including generating custom data patterns for creating protocol errors and link state changes. Used extensively by USB 3.0 chipset vendors to verify compliance at the digital layer, the latest release of the Voyager system now adds the ability to place devices into electrical loopback and compliance link states.

Both transmitter and receiver testing are required to gain USB 3.0 logo certification. All USB 3.0 devices must support a standard set of commands designed to initiate special test modes that generate repeatable patterns. For transmitter testing, the Voyager system can set up the required test modes while an attached oscilloscope is used to measure the transmitted compliance patterns. For receiver testing, the device under test must enter a special mode which echoes back a predefined loopback pattern. The Voyager system can generate this special loopback pattern while monitoring the received traffic for bit errors.

Full compliance testing requires the addition of jitter tolerance measurements to the loopback stream. Specialized equipment, such as LeCroy’s PERT Receiver Tolerance Test system or general purpose Bit Error Rate Testers (BERTs) may be used to introduce jitter during the full electrical layer compliance test process.

“Early developers have been looking for an easier way to initiate these built-in test modes for their SuperSpeed devices”, said Mike Micheletti, Product Manager at LeCroy’s Protocol Solutions Group. “The LeCroy Voyager exerciser now includes this capability at no additional cost allowing users to leverage the Voyager systems already in their lab to perform early stage signal integrity testing.”

The Voyager software release 3.80 will also feature a new graphical user interface for creating custom exerciser test scripts. Pull down menus allow users to define custom SCSI operations by simply editing a properties page. This release includes enhancements to the Real Time Statistics (RTS) display with the addition of Frame Error Rate tracking. The new software provides improved triggering on USB Attached SCSI (UAS) commands; and additional search functions. The LeCroy version 3.80 will be released March 2nd, 2010 and is available at no cost to current Voyager users.