TekScope™ Analysis Datasheet

TekScope brings the power of the oscilloscope analysis environment to the PC. Users have the flexibility to perform analysis tasks including serial decode, power analysis, as well as timing, eye, and jitter analysis outside the lab. You can continue your session from your oscilloscope at any place and share the results. Reduces efforts to see screenshots when you need to dive deeper or while sharing. Reload the session on your 2/4/5/6 oscilloscope, if you want to redo the measurement.

Import and share waveform data, setups, and sessions (where supported) for: TBS 1000C Series, TBS 2000 Series, TDS 2000C Series, 2 Series MSO, 3 Series MDO, 4 Series MSO, 4 Series B MSO, 5 Series MSO, 5 Series B MSO, 5 Series Low-Profile MSO, MSO/DPO 5000 Series, 6 Series MSO, 6 Series B MSO, 6 Series Low-Profile Digitizer, DPO 7000 Series, DPO/MSO/DPS 70000 SX/DX/C, and MSO/MDO 3000.

Key features

• Collaborate
  • TekScope runs on your PC: Enables better time and resource utilization; view, measure, and analyze data captured in your lab, independent of the oscilloscope hardware.
  • Compatible with most common save/recall waveform files: Common analysis tools independent of the hardware acquisition, including:
    • .tss (2/4/5/6 Series session files – setups and waveforms)
    • .wfm, .isf (Tektronix)
    • .bin (Keysight)
    • .trc (Lecroy)
    • .tr0 (Spice)
    • .csv (general purpose)

• Analyze
  • Cursors: Waveform(s), V Bars, H Bars, and V&H Bars
  • Measurements: 34 standard
  • Plots: Time Trend, Histogram, Spectrum, XY, XYZ, and Eye Diagrams
  • Math: Basic waveform arithmetic, FFT, and advanced equation editor
  • Search: Quickly find events in your data based on specified criteria
  • Clocked/unclocked Parallel Bus Decode
  • Multi-Scope Analysis: Remotely connect to multiple oscilloscopes to view and analyze real-time data from many channels simultaneously. Connect up to four oscilloscopes and 32 channels.
  • Low Speed Protocol Decode: Protocol Decode and Search Analysis of all common Embedded, Automotive, Aerospace, Consumer and Audio protocols.
  • Advanced Jitter Measurements and Eye Analysis
  • Power Electronic Analysis:
    • Advanced Power Analysis
    • Magnetics Analysis
    • Inverter Motor Drive Analysis
  • Power Integrity Analysis:
    • Digital Power Management
    • SPMI Serial Decode and Search
  • SpectrumView along with Spectrogram Analysis: Perform time and frequency domains simultaneously.
    Requires RF vs. Time option on oscilloscope.
  • Easy Access to Remote Oscilloscope: Use TekScope to remotely pull data from your oscilloscope and perform offline measurements and analysis.
• Document
  • Waveform and plot annotations: Share detailed analysis results; measurements, anomalies, and points of interest for future reference, collaboration with suppliers, or communicating with the team.
  • Reports: Easily document measurement results and configuration details with detailed test report.
  • Custom display configuration: Group plots in multiple configurations with stacked or overlaid waveform view.

Applications and uses

• Offline analysis: Analyze your waveform files from any location at any time to improve your working efficiency without any internet or intranet connection.
• Real-Time analysis: Remotely connect to the newest and most modern Tektronix oscilloscopes to acquire data directly from oscilloscope in real-time. Save time and eliminate unnecessary trips to the lab with data available at your desk, at home, or while traveling.
• Multi-Scope analysis: View and analyze data from multiple oscilloscopes on the same screen. Rearrange channel information, stack group, zoom, add cursors or measurements in a seamless interface. Increase your ability to look at a greater number of channels, all in a single view to accelerate your analysis efficiency.
• Data sharing: Share waveforms, measurements, and configuration details among distributed team members or suppliers to root cause the source of failures. Dive into the actual data rather than using static screenshots and eyeballing images.
• Enhance your measurements and analysis options: Not every oscilloscope has the latest and most modern software options. TekScope enables you to leverage our award-winning 2/4/5/6 Series user interface and software options and apply them to any Tektronix oscilloscope and to most of competitors' oscilloscopes as well.
• Datalogging: Using any supported measurement, create a long-running data log using a remote connection to a scope. For example, you can log RMS, Max, and Min Voltage on 8 channels every 10 seconds for a week.
• Continuous Acquisition: Allows capturing waveforms in a continuous manner or for a defined number of runs.

TekScope overview

Today's systems become more complex and teams are more distributed across geographies, functional areas of expertise, even partners and suppliers. As many engineers move to off-scope environments, TekScope allows the engineer to process, analyze, and share data efficiently, without having to be physically next to an oscilloscope or in the testing environment. The ease of operating with the TekScope software alongside other tools that you use every day allows faster correlation and insight. These needs range from easy ways to share data, the ability to run measurements outside the lab, and methods to correlating lab measurements with simulation results.

Collaborate - TekScope runs on your PC, enabling analysis of data captured in your lab. Sessions can easily be saved on your Tektronix oscilloscope and recalled at any given time. In addition to Tektronix waveforms, other file formats are supported including .wfm, .isf, .tss, .bin, .trc, .csv, and .tr0, to enable correlation.

Analyze - Measurements performed on TekScope use a common measurement library with 2/4/5/6 Series Tektronix oscilloscope to correlate the results. TekScope supports a range of measurements including power, jitter, and eye measurements. Plots can be customized and are interactive with zoom and cursor controls allowing custom views to share.

Document - Results and views can be saved as a session file and archived for later use or sent to a colleague or supplier for a debug session. Alternatively, results can be archived and saved in the .pdf or the .mht format using the report generator. The report can be customized to include the information of interest including: configuration details, measurement results, and plots. Plot and measurement data can also be saved to a .csv format file for archiving or data analysis in external applications.

Collaboration and setup sharing

Sharing data acquired on the oscilloscope for use with TekScope is as simple as saving 2/4/5/6 Series session and recalling in the application. Waveforms captured on any Tektronix oscilloscope can also be loaded using TekScope application.

Workflow improvements

Sessions from the 2/4/5/6 Series Oscilloscope enables improvements to your workflow. Saving a session from your oscilloscope is easily recalled in TekScope for further analysis and annotations. Use TekDrive to transfer instantly without USB sticks, screenshots, or email. With a 2/4/5/6 Series Oscilloscope, you can also make changes to settings and restore your session on your oscilloscope to resume where you left off without needing to reconfigure the oscilloscope from the beginning. Double-click or drag and drop any supported file from your PC into TekScope for quick recall.

Analysis

Start to add annotations, measurements, decode, and plots after capturing your data. Free up your oscilloscope for colleagues, work from the comfort of your desk or even from home. By adding analysis when you want to, your data story unfolds for more flexibility in creating presentations and sharing results than relying only on static screenshots. Post-analysis lets you go back to past captures to double check results without needing to set up the oscilloscope again. Rather than starting from scratch when you do need to re-measure, simply reload your session file on the 2/4/5/6 Series MSO with any changes you need in settings and rapidly get back to work.

Measurements

Most oscilloscopes measure only on the first cycles of the waveform. TekScope measurement system allows measurements on all occurrences in the record. This improvement increases your measurement insights from all other waveforms and from other oscilloscopes. To gather measurement statistics, generates statistics from a single waveform rather than requiring multiple waveforms. Our measurement algorithms are also clearly documented in our Help system, which ensures the confidence in your results.

Reports for data archive

After completion of analysis, a report is generated to share or archive. Options, including the ability to include plots or configuration details, allow the user to specify the information that goes in the report. Reports can be archived as an .mht or .pdf file.

Waveform correlation between lab or simulation results

A common issue that arises when taking lab measurements is correlation between instrumentation and simulation. The source of differences can be related to a difference in measurement algorithms. TekScope allows the user to import multiple waveform formats from different sources, including .wfm, .isf, .tss, .csv, .bin, .trc, and .tr0, enabling the use of common analysis tools, eliminating the differences due to differing analysis tools. For example, the user can simultaneously compare the eye opening of a waveform captured in the lab vs. a simulated waveform or waveform captured on a different oscilloscope.

Multi-Scope remote analysis

Developing test applications that require many oscilloscope channels, sometimes from two or more oscilloscopes, can impose significant feasibility challenges as well as greater development efforts and longer time to market. You can now add more channels to your testing environment while setting the multi-scope system to behave as one unit and save a lot of time analyzing many channels from different oscilloscopes and trying to synchronize all of them together.

View and analyze data from multiple oscilloscopes on the same screen. Rearrange channel information, stack group, zoom, add cursors or measurements in a seamless interface. This capability supports up to four oscilloscopes and 32 channels.

The Multi-Scope analysis solution enables you to remotely control the acquisition settings on all oscilloscopes simultaneously without the need to set up each oscilloscope individually. It provides a way to catch very fast glitches in high resolution across many channels at the same time. Once the data is acquired and captured on TekScope, you can then run measurements and analyze across all channels from different oscilloscopes at once.

Data transfer modes

1. Simple data transfer without triggering remote oscilloscopes – Get what you see on the oscilloscope.

   [Use Refresh Waveforms button].

2. Acquire new waveform data upon triggering remote oscilloscopes. Trigger/Horizontal/Vertical settings are controlled by TekScope.

   [Use Utility > I/O > TekScope Remote Control button set to ON and use Acquire button to acquire the data]

3. Acquire new waveform data upon triggering remote oscilloscopes. Trigger/Horizontal/Vertical settings are not controlled by TekScope, but instead TekScope uses the locally-configured settings on each oscilloscope.

   [Use Utility > I/O > TekScope Remote Control button set to OFF and use Acquire button to acquire the data]

Tektronix High Speed Interface (TekHSI)

TekHSI is a modern gRPC based alternative to VISA/SCPI based curve commands for transferring data from oscilloscopes to your PC. When a remote oscilloscope is added in TekScope PC, a capability discovery takes place, allowing TekScope PC to automatically switch to the fastest available data transfer mechanism, whether TekHSI or Curve. There are no user preferences or options to turn this on/off in TekScope PC. As of June 2024, supported oscilloscopes for HSI are 4 Series B MSO, 5/6 Series MSO (both Bs and LPs). Please ensure you are running TekScope PC version 2.10 along with oscilloscope firmware version 2.10 to use TekHSI. TekHSI also works with USB 3.0 (for the oscilloscope) to 2.5 Gbps (for your pc) adapters. Learn more about TekHSI.

Fast screen capture

From the version 2.12, the screen capture enahcencent allows you to transfer your instruments screen capture to your pc without transferring the waveform data, resulting in the quickest way to get your remotely connected oscilloscopes screenshot.

Synchronizing channels across instruments

For the Multi-Scope analysis solution to be most accurate, it is important to set up your instruments so that all channels can be tightly synchronized and less skewed. Skew is the time difference between instrument channels from the perfect ideal alignment. Deskewing removes different forms of errors such as jitter, delta-time accuracy, and cable delay. There are multiple ways to skew channel data.

As time correlation among channels from different oscilloscopes is dependent on the instruments' setup, cases can range from 350 ps of skew between all channels using an easy setup to below 50 ps using a setup that involves more steps. Following are the examples of two edges:

350 ps Skew example

Easy setup

1. Use matched phase cables into the Aux input.
2. Set Aux input for trigger.

<50 ps Skew example

Best performance setup

1. Use matched sync cables.
2. Use CH<x> for trigger (not aux input).
3. Deskew each CH to trigger input.
4. Attach ref clock sync cable between instruments if capturing >2 µs of time.
5. Measure to validate the amount of skew coming through all the channels.

You can watch videos for more understanding on Multi-Scope analysis.

• For Multi-Scope analysis 24-channel example refer https://www.tek.com/video/tekscope-multi-scope-analysis
• To know more about how to set up Multi-Scope analysis on a TekScope, refer https://www.tek.com/video/how-to-set-up-multi-scope-analysis-on-tekscope-pc-software%20

Serial protocol decode and analysis

Enhance your productivity through serial protocol decode tools to rapidly decode and search on results in your waveforms. Recognizing errors or correlating control results to other behaviors rapidly speeds up your ability to identify and resolve issues in your system.

Easy access to your remote oscilloscope

TekScope allows you to remotely connect to your Tektronix oscilloscope and retrieve data in real-time. Once the data is automatically transferred into the TekScope PC software, you can continue to run the analysis offline. See a list of supported scopes in the specification table under “Remote Oscilloscope Access”.

For some oscilloscopes, you can create a real-time control panel similar to e*scope for both Linux and Windows-based scopes. With this, you gain full scope control without leaving the TekScope environment. Lastly, remote-control-capable scopes allow you to set basic scope settings like horizontal and vertical params and propagate those settings to all connected scopes.

TekDrive collaborative workspace

Using TekDrive, you can upload, store, organize, search, download, and share any file type from any connected device. TekDrive is natively integrated into the TekScope PC Software for seamless sharing and recalling of files - no USB stick required. TekDrive is purpose built for integration, automation, and security. Visit www.tek.com/software/tekdrive to learn more.

Measurement datalogging using Act On Event feature

With the data-logging tool accessible through Utility > Act On Event, you can set up a long-running test that saves measurement results periodically over time. Set the Timer Interval and the Count to configure the task and click Acquire to start logging. For example, you could set up a test to sample all configured measurement values 1000 times for every 30 seconds. This would create a task that runs for 8 hours and 20 minutes, generating a csv with 1000 measurement values and timestamps. This capability is great for HALT/HASS testing, battery depletion, temperature characterization, debugging drift, and anything that needs trend analysis over time. In addition to measurements, you can save waveforms and even screenshots at every interval.

Customizable display

Waveform analysis is no longer constrained to a single oscilloscope display. TekScope allows you to control the analysis environment.

Two options are available for waveform viewing, either overlay mode or stacked mode. You can simply toggle between the two modes based on the required analysis. For example, when looking at edge crossings between two data signals, overlay mode may be preferred. As the number of waveforms grows, stacked mode is typically preferred.

Other scenarios require the evaluation of waveforms and plot data, including eye diagrams, spectrums, bathtub plots, or histograms. Plots can be viewed in the same window as the waveform or in cases where additional screen real estate is needed a group of plots can be created and displayed on a second monitor. Within the group of plots, the user has the flexibility to customize the layout by simply dragging and dropping the plots within the display. For example, as shown below when viewing the jitter spectrum or FFT of a waveform, a stacked view is preferred.

You can also have a side-by-side view.

When a single display is not sufficient to view the necessary plots, they can quickly be grouped and moved to a second monitor. Once grouped, the user has the flexibility to customize the layout and the ability to view the plots in either tabbed or grid mode. Tab mode provides a maximized view of an individual plot while allowing you to click on the other tabs to toggle between the plots. Grid mode provides a single view of all the plots in the group.

Waveform zoom and cursors

Interactive plots with zoom and cursors – Plots provide a deep level understanding of system behavior. It is often desired to zoom in on plot data, some common reasons to zoom on plots include placing cursors to take measurements at precise locations. Zooming enables precise viewing of the portion of the plot of interest. While zoomed in the overview window, it always provides context of the zoomed area in relation to the entire plot.

Cursor support for plots and waveforms can provide additional measurement details. For example, the amplitude and period of a waveform can be determined using cursors, or measurement results variation can be determined by evaluating the trend plot. The multi-source cursor functionality conveniently allow seeing cursors across all waveforms at the same time.

Key capabilities

TekScope is available with three license tiers to meet your needs. This table summarizes the core capabilities TekScope offers.