Oscilloscopes CAN FD support meets automotive demand

Automobile manufacturers are increasingly adopting the CAN FD (Controller Area Network with Flexible Data Rate) protocol which allows them to transmit more data inside vehicles.

Widely adopted in the automobile industry, the original CAN specification defined in the ISO 11898 standard limited communication speeds to 1 Mb/s.

CAN FD solves the bandwidth limitation problem by allowing faster bit rates and increases payload size from 8 bytes to 64 bytes. With the faster speeds and increased complexity come new test and measurement challenges.

The new Tektronix CAN FD solution gives automotive engineers working with this protocol a powerful debugging and validation tool to quickly and efficiently validate and troubleshoot designs with full visibility into actual bus traffic.

CAN FD (MDO3AUTO, DPO4AUTO, DPO4AUTOMAX) software is a complete protocol trigger, decode and search solution for Tektronix MDO3000 and MDO4000C Series oscilloscopes. Software capabilities include a flexible trigger on data packets and arbitration conditions (I.e. SOF, ID, etc.) with ISO and non-ISO support, protocol decoding with colour coding of data along with data views and support for both CAN and CAN FD (ISO and non ISO) .

The software also enables search support for specific CAN FD data, table listing with time stamps and an ability to store and export data.

Tektronix MDO3000 and MDO4000C mixed domain oscilloscopes have an an integrated spectrum analyser giving engineers insights into both time and frequency domains. Even in serial design applications, engineers often need to tackle a range of tasks from device and system level debug to power optimisation and EMI pre-compliance testing. 

The MDO3000 is the ultimate 6-in-1 integrated oscilloscope with an integrated spectrum analyser, arbitrary function generator, logic analyser, protocol analyser, and digital voltmeter/counter. The MDO3000 is completely customisable and fully upgradeable as needs change. The MDO4000C also offers 6-in-1 versatility and upgrade flexibility together with higher performance and powerful triggering, search and analysis tools.

For serial applications such as CAN FD analysis, automated search functions combine with unique Wave Inspector controls to help users find events of interest in seconds. Considering that with long record lengths a single acquisition can include thousands of screen waveforms, this function can be a major time saver.