Oscilloscope for High-Voltage Measurements

National Instruments (NI) recently announced the PXIe-5164, a platform-based high-speed, high-resolution, high-voltage oscilloscope. The PXIe-5164 oscilloscope, which is built on the open, modular PXI architecture, includes a user-programmable FPGA (field programmable gate array) and delivers two Category II-rated channels with 100 Vpp (peak-to-peak voltage) maximum input range at 1 GS/s (gigasamples per second) and 14-bit analog input resolution. Using the PXIe-5164’s FPGA, says NI, helps aerospace/defense, semiconductor and physics engineers and researchers design applications that require high-voltage measurements and high levels of amplitude accuracy.

NI describes the PXIe-5164 as ideal for working with applications featuring fast signals that require up to 400MHz of analog bandwidth and for resolving small signal details in the presence of large signals with 14 bits of vertical resolution. This high-speed oscilloscope has two channels that sample at up to 1 GS/s with flexible settings for coupling and input impedance, an input voltage range of up to 100V and an offset of up to 250V.

The PXIe-5164 oscilloscope features 400 MHz of bandwidth, 14 bits of resolution, 250 volts of measurement range and a user-programmable FPGA (field-programmable gate array). Image courtesy of National Instruments.

Engineers, researchers and scientists can use the NI LabVIEW FPGA Module to program the PXIe-5164’s Xilinx Kintex-7 410 FPGA to create custom intellectual property, such as filtering or triggering. As well, they can as well use the PXIe-5164 oscilloscope with NI TestStand test management software, which is designed to simplify creating and deploying test systems in the lab or on the production floor.

According to NI, the PXIe-5164, like all NI PXI oscilloscopes, provides a number of triggering modes as well as an instrument driver that includes data streaming and analysis functions. Through interactive soft front panels in the NI-SCOPE device driver, users can make basic measurements, debug automated applications or view data as the test program runs. The driver includes help files, documentation and ready-to-run example programs to assist in test code development. The programming interface also works with such development environments as C, Microsoft .NET and NI LabVIEW system design software.

Additional features and capabilities of the PXIe-5164 oscilloscope include up to 34 channels to build parallel, high-channel-count systems in a compact form factor on a single PXI chassis and a 3.2 GB/s (gigabytes per second) streaming data rate to the host enabled by eight lanes of PCI Express Gen 2 bus communications. The PXIe-5164 comes with 1.5GB of on-board memory.

The PXIe-5164 oscilloscope is shown here prior to insertion into an NI PXIe-1086, an 18-Slot 3U PXI Express Redundant Chassis. To the oscilloscope’s left is the PXIe-8880, an Intel Xeon processor-based eight-core PXI Express controller. Image courtesy of National Instruments.

“PXI oscilloscopes from NI reduce test time, increase channel density, and now, deliver even better measurement flexibility with the combination of high bandwidth, resolution and input voltage,” said Steve Warntjes, vice president of R&D at NI, in a press statement. “Our new PXIe-5164 oscilloscope can make some measurements that box instruments today just can’t handle. If you want to measure a high-voltage signal of up to 100 Vpp at up to 1 GS/s, you can now use the same instrument to see small signal details that would normally be hidden by the noise of the instrument thanks to [its] 14-bit ADC.”

For complete details on the PXIe-5164 oscilloscope, visit NI.

Read a white paper on how to reduce test costs while building smarter test systems with PXI oscilloscopes.

Learn more about the LabVIEW FPGA module.

Learn more about PXI architecture.

Learn more about the NI PXIe-1086 chassis.

Learn more about the PXIe-8880 controller.

See why DE‘s editors selected NI’s new PXIe-5164 oscilloscope as their Pick of the Week.

Sources: Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.