Chris Scholz
Today’s excerpt with Chris Scholz, Product Manager, Vector Network Analyzers, R&S North America, focuses on the SI tools that engineers will need to meet the SI challenge in 2016.
Ed: What tools do you see engineers using and how well do they handle this oncoming SI challenge?
Chris: Vector Network Analyzers have the reputation of being complicated and were considered a specialist tool for ultra-precise measurements and for calibration labs. This SI tool technology has changed, for the better.
Today’s modern computing technology and graphic user interfaces arm any lab technician (with minimal training) to produce reliable and trustworthy VNA measurements. So with modern VNAs, you get the best of both worlds: precise measurements to a well-defined reference plane and ease of use of a modern test tool.
This is of special interest for SI applications where test strategies are traditionally centered around time-domain measurements such as eye diagrams, jitter margins, equalizers and time-domain reflectometry. Today’s VNAs can perform all these measurements and the results tend to be more accurate and repeatable than with traditional tools.
