Time Interval Analyzers
and Frequency Counters

Ultra-High Performance
Continuous measurement capability

The BI200/BI201 are ultra high performance time and fre-quency measurement instruments. Their high resolution and throughput, combined with continuous measurement capability, allow you to make measurements that are not possible with traditional time-interval counters. For example, they can time¬tag events (edges of an input pulse train) at a rate of 4 million per second continuously to on-board memory, while each of the edges is measured with 3 ps resolution. This provides them with the capa¬bility to analyze the dynamic variations in pulse timing, pulsewidth, or frequency. In other words, the difference be¬tween the BI200/BI201 and traditional counter/timers is analogous to the difference between voltmeters and scopes. Measure¬ments can also be streamed continuously over the PCI Ex¬press bus allowing unlimited acquisition at high rates.

FEATURES

• Direct Time Measurement of Pulse Trains
• Measure Jitter, Frequency, Time Interval (Skew), Pulse Width, Risetime, Event Timing, Time Interval Error (TIE), and More
• 3ps Single-Shot Resolution (12 Digits/s Frequency)
• 2 GHz (BI200) or 800 MHz (BI201) Frequency Range. All functions Including Pulsewidth Work Over the Entire Frequency Range
• Up to 4 Million Continuous Zero Dead Time Measurements Per Second
• 100ps Minimum Pulse Width
• Highly Sophisticated and Flexible Arming (Triggering)
• PCI Express Interface for Super High Throughput
• On-board Memory for 8 Million Measurement Points – Can Be Read While Measurements are Taking Place

Full Specifications

Full-Featured Instruments

The BI200/BI201 are full instruments-on-a-card with all the features and capabilities you would expect in bench-top in-struments including high quality inputs, built-in NIST traceable calibration, and software and hardware that deliver fully com-puted results. The instruments have 10 measurement functions such as Fre¬quency, Time Interval and Pulsewidth. All functions work di¬rectly on the input signal at frequencies up to 2 GHz (4 Gb/s) for the BI200, or 800 MHz (1.6 Gb/s) for the BI201 with¬out any prescaling. This means that with the BI200 you can measure pulses as narrow as 100 ps, occurring at frequencies up to 2 GHz, or the skew between two signals at 4 Gb/s.

The inputs of the instruments include programmable termina-tion voltage and hysteresis. These are features that are seldom found even in the best of the bench-top instruments. When you connect your signal source to the BI200/BI201 it sees a 50 ohm load which is terminated to an accurately programmable volt¬age between -2 V and +3 V. This allows you to connect ECL, PECL, or CML sources directly to the instruments with the proper loading. It even allows you to terminate the signal from CMOS sources to a center voltage which provides a symmetri¬cal load for superior performance. The programmable hys¬teresis is an important feature for signals with slow risetime or high noise levels.

APPLICATIONS

• PLLs and frequency modulation – measure jitter, time interval error and settling time
• Ultrasonic and radar pulse timing
• Optical and magnetic disk drive – measure jitter, risetime, and bit timing directly
• PCI Express and other high speed serial interfaces – measure jitter and skew
• Oscillators and crystals – measure frequency, start-up time and time interval error
• Pulse width modulated signals – measure variations over time
• Nuclear physics
• Time stamping of events in real time

	App note: Clock Chip and Oscillator Testing
	App note: Frequency Reference Comparison

Easy to Use Software

The software for the BI200/BI201 is designed for ease of use and extremely high performance. The driver software auto-matically manages the streaming of measurements at the su-per high rates which are possible with the PCI Express inter-face. The front panel software for Windows allows you to easily set up multiple simultaneous displays of the measure-ments. This gives multiple views of the same data, or different functions from the same data. For example, you can set up the display to show a graph of the frequency of the signal vs. time, plus a tabular display of the same results, plus a graph of the time deviation of the signal vs. time, all from the same measure¬ment acquisition run. The front panel can also run multiple instruments simultaneously.

The actual screen shot in the following page shows three views of the same Time Interval Error (TIE) measurement of a clock signal. Notice how the graph clearly shows a repetitive devia¬tion in the clock edge timing of about 8 ps which occurs about every 170 ms. Also, note the rms jitter of 3.8 ps which is shown in the digital display. This is the jitter of the signal plus the in¬strument measurement noise. The table display provides addi¬tional information about each of the measurement points.