Key performance specifications

Typical applications

• Embedded design and IoT

  Discover and solve issues quickly by performing system level debug on mixed signal embedded systems including today’s most common serial bus technologies with the 3 Series MDO and support for a broad set of common serial buses.

• Power design

  Make reliable and repeatable voltage, current, and power measurements using automated power quality, switching loss, harmonics, ripple, modulation, and safe operating area measurements with the widest selection of power probes in an affordable solution.

• Education

  Managing multiple instruments on a bench can be troublesome. The 3 Series MDO combines analog, digital, and RF measurements with a signal source in a single, small (5.9 in., 149 mm deep) instrument. The combination of a small instrument and high level of integration aids in the teaching of various electronics principles as well as in its usage for more sophisticated lab experiments. Full upgradeability enables adding functionality over time as needs change or budgets allow.

• Manufacturing Test and Troubleshooting

  Size and space constraints can play havoc on a manufacturing floor. The 3 Series MDO minimizes rack or bench space by integrating multiple instruments into one small package. Integration reduces cost associated with utilizing multiple different instrument types in manufacturing test or troubleshooting stations.

• Service Installation and Maintenance

  Having the right instruments when and where you need them is critical. The 3 Series MDO combines analog waveforms, digital logic, and spectrum analysis in a lightweight (11.7 lbs, 5.3 kg), portable package – making it the perfect choice where space is limited and flexibility is desired.

The next generation of oscilloscopes

	3 Series MDO	4 Series MSO	5 Series MSO	6 Series B MSO
Bandwidth	up to 1 GHz	up to 1.5 GHz	up to 2 GHz	up to 10 GHz
Vertical Resolution	8 bits	12 bits	12 bits	12 bits
Display	11.6″ HD	13.3″ HD	15.6″ HD	15.6″ HD
Inputs	TekVPI	FlexChannel / TekVPI	FlexChannel / TekVPI	FlexChannel / TekVPI
Advanced Analysis	–	–	Compliance / Jitter / Windows OS	Compliance / Jitter / Windows OS

Exceptionally easy-to-use user interface lets you focus on the task at hand

The Settings Bar – key parameters and waveform management

Waveform and scope operating parameters are displayed in a series of badges in the Settings Bar that runs along the bottom of the display. The Settings Bar provides immediate access for the most common waveform management tasks. With a single tap, you can:

• Turn on channels
• Add math waveforms
• Add reference waveforms
• Add bus waveforms
• Enable 16 digital channels MSO
• Enable the Spectrum Analyzer
• Enable the integrated Arbitrary/Function generator (AFG)
• Enable the integrated digital voltmeter (DVM)

The Results Bar – analysis and measurements

The Results Bar on the right side of the display includes immediate, one-tap access to the most common analytical tools such as cursors, measurements, searches and bus decode results tables.

Cursors, measurements and search results badges are displayed in the Results Bar without sacrificing any waveform viewing area. For additional waveform viewing area, the Results Bar can be dismissed and brought back at any time.

Touch interaction finally done right

Scopes have included touch screens for years, but the touch screen has been an afterthought. The 3 Series MDO 11.6″ display includes a capacitive touchscreen and provides a user interface truly designed for touch.

The touch interactions that you use with phones and tablets, and expect in a touch enabled device, are supported in the 3 Series MDO.

• Drag waveforms left/right or up/down to adjust horizontal and vertical position or to pan a zoomed view
• Pinch and expand to change scale or zoom in/out in either horizontal or vertical directions
• Swipe in from the right to reveal the Results Bar or down from the top to access the menus in the upper left corner of the display

Smooth, responsive front panel controls allow you to make adjustments with familiar knobs and buttons, and you can add a mouse or keyboard as a third interaction method.

Powerful Waveform Capture and Analysis

At the core of the 3 Series MDO is a world-class oscilloscope, offering comprehensive tools that speed each stage of debug – from quickly discovering anomalies and capturing them, to searching your waveform record for events of interest and analyzing their characteristics and your device’s behavior.

Digital phosphor technology with FastAcq™ high-speed waveform capture

To debug a design problem, first you must know it exists. Every design engineer spends time looking for problems in their design, a time- consuming and frustrating task without the right debug tools.

Digital phosphor technology provides you with fast insight into the real operation of your device. Its fast waveform capture rate – greater than 280,000  wfms/s with FastAcq – gives you a high probability of quickly seeing the infrequent problems common in digital systems: runt pulses, glitches, timing issues, and more.

To further enhance the visibility of rarely occurring events, intensity grading is used to indicate how often rare transients are occurring relative to normal signal characteristics. There are four waveform palettes available in FastAcq acquisition mode.

• The Temperature palette uses color-grading to indicate frequency of occurrence with hot colors like red/yellow indicating frequently occurring events and colder colors like blue/green indicating rarely occurring events.
• The Spectral palette uses color-grading to indicate frequency of occurrence with colder colors like blue indicating frequently occurring events and hot colors like red indicating rarely occurring events.
• The Normal palette uses the default channel color (like yellow for channel one) along with gray-scale to indicate frequency of occurrence where frequently occurring events are bright.
• The Inverted palette uses the default channel color along with gray-scale to indicate frequency of occurrence where rarely occurring events are bright.

These color palettes quickly highlight the events that over time occur more often or, in the case of infrequent anomalies, occur less often.

Infinite or variable persistence choices determine how long waveforms stay on the display, helping you to determine how often an anomaly is occurring.

Triggering

Discovering a device fault is only the first step. Next, you must capture the event of interest to identify root cause. To enable this, the 3 Series MDO contains over 125 trigger combinations providing a complete set of triggers – including runt, logic, pulse width/glitch, setup and hold violation, serial packet, and parallel data – to help quickly locate your event of interest. And with up to a 10 M record length, you can capture many events of interest, even thousands of serial packets, in a single acquisition for further analysis while maintaining high resolution to zoom in on fine signal details.

Basic waveform analysis and automated measurements

Verifying that your prototype’s performance matches simulations and meets the project’s design goals requires careful analysis, ranging from simple checks of rise times and pulse widths to sophisticated power loss analysis, characterization of system clocks, and investigation of noise sources.

The 3 Series MDO offers a comprehensive set of standard analysis tools including:

• Waveform- and screen-based cursors
• Up to 8 automated measurements
• Basic waveform math
• Basic FFT analysis
• Advanced waveform math with equation editor

Measurement results tables provide comprehensive statistical views of measurement results.

Easy navigation and search

Finding your event of interest in a long waveform record can be time consuming without the right search tools. With today’s record lengths of many millions of data points, locating your event can mean scrolling through literally thousands of screens of signal activity.

The 3 Series MDO offers the industry’s most comprehensive search and waveform navigation with its innovative on-screen controls. These controls speed panning and zooming through your record. Use intuitive pinch/expand gestures on the display or the multipurpose knobs to investigate areas of interest in a long record.

The Search feature allows you to automatically search through your long acquisition looking for user-defined events. All occurrences of the event are highlighted with search marks and are easily navigated to, using the Previous ( ← ) and Next ( → ) buttons found on the Search badge on the display. Search types include edge, pulse width, timeout, runt, logic, setup and hold, rise/fall time and parallel/serial bus packet content.

Comprehensive power analysis (optional)

Ever increasing consumer demands for longer battery-life devices and for green solutions that consume less power require power-supply designers to characterize and minimize switching losses to improve efficiency. In addition, the supply’s power levels, output purity, and harmonic feedback into the power line must be characterized to comply with national and regional power quality standards. Historically, making these and many other power measurements on an oscilloscope has been a long, manual, and tedious process. The 3 Series MDO optional power analysis tools greatly simplify these tasks, enabling quick, repeatable and accurate analysis of power quality, switching loss, harmonics, safe operating area (SOA), modulation, ripple, and slew rate (di/dt, dv/dt). Completely integrated into the oscilloscope, the power analysis tools provide automated, repeatable power measurements with a touch of a button. The optional power analysis functionality is offered free for a 30-day trial period. This free trial period starts automatically when the instrument is powered on for the first time.

Unique built-in Spectrum Analyzer

The Tektronix MDO series is the only oscilloscope to offer an integrated, hardware-based spectrum analyzer. The spectrum analyzer frequency range of the 3 Series MDO can be from 9 kHz to 1 GHz or 3 GHz (option 3-SA3), enabling spectral analysis on IoT and most consumer wireless standards. 1 GHz comes standard on all models, 3 GHz is optional.

Fast and accurate spectral analysis

When using the spectrum analyzer standard N-connector input, the 3 Series MDO display becomes a full-screen Spectrum Analyzer view.

Key spectral parameters such as Center Frequency, Span, Reference Level, and Resolution Bandwidth are all adjusted quickly and easily using on-screen touch controls.

Intelligent efficient markers

In a traditional spectrum analyzer, it can be a very tedious task to turn on and place enough markers to identify all your peaks of interest. The 3 Series MDO makes this process far more efficient by automatically placing markers on peaks that indicate both the frequency and the amplitude of each peak. You can adjust the criteria that the oscilloscope uses to automatically find the peaks.

The highest amplitude peak is referred to as the reference marker and is shown in red. Marker readouts can be switched between Absolute and Delta readouts. When Delta is selected, marker readouts show each peak’s delta frequency and delta amplitude from the reference marker.

Two manual cursors are also available for measuring non-peak portions of the spectrum. When enabled, the reference marker is attached to one of the cursors, enabling delta measurements from anywhere in the spectrum. In addition to frequency and amplitude, cursor readouts also include noise density and phase noise readouts depending on whether Absolute or Delta readouts are selected. A “Reference Marker to Center” function instantly moves the frequency indicated by the reference marker to center frequency

Spectrogram

The 3 Series MDO includes a spectrogram display which is ideal for monitoring slowly changing RF phenomena. The x-axis represents frequency, just like a typical spectrum display. However, the y-axis represents time, and color is used to indicate amplitude.

Spectrogram slices are generated by taking each spectrum and “flipping it up on its edge” so that it’s one pixel row tall, and then assigning colors to each pixel based on the amplitude at that frequency. Cold colors (blue, green) are low amplitude and hotter colors (yellow, red) are higher amplitude. Each new acquisition adds another slice at the bottom of the spectrogram and the history moves up one row. When acquisitions are stopped, you can scroll back through the spectrogram to look at any individual spectrum slice.

Ultra-wide capture bandwidth

Today’s wireless communications vary significantly with time, using sophisticated digital modulation schemes and, often, transmission techniques that involve bursting the output. These modulation schemes can have very wide bandwidth as well. Traditional swept or stepped spectrum analyzers are ill equipped to view these types of signals as they are only able to look at a small portion of the spectrum at any one time.

The amount of spectrum acquired in one acquisition is called the capture bandwidth. Traditional spectrum analyzers sweep or step the capture bandwidth through the desired span to build the requested image. As a result, while the spectrum analyzer is acquiring one portion of the spectrum, the event you care about may be happening in another portion of the spectrum. Most spectrum analyzers on the market today have 10 MHz capture bandwidths, sometimes with expensive options to extend that to 20, 40, or even 160 MHz in some cases.

In order to address the bandwidth requirements of modern RF, the 3 Series MDO provides up to 3 GHz of capture bandwidth. The spectrum is generated from a single acquisition, thus guaranteeing you’ll see the events you’re looking for in the frequency domain.

Spectrum traces

The 3 Series MDO spectrum analyzer offers four different traces or views including Normal, Average, Max Hold, and Min Hold.

RF measurements

The 3 Series MDO includes three automated RF measurements – Channel Power, Adjacent Channel Power Ratio, and Occupied Bandwidth. When one of these RF measurements is activated, the oscilloscope automatically turns on the Average spectrum trace and sets the detection method to Average for optimal measurement results.

RF probing

Signal input methods on spectrum analyzers are typically limited to cabled connections or antennas. In addition to using the standard N-connector, the 3 Series MDO Spectrum Analyzer can use 50 Ω TekVPI probes with the optional TPA-N-VPI adapter. This enables additional flexibility when hunting for noise sources and enables easier spectral analysis by using true signal browsing on a spectrum analyzer input.

In addition, an optional preamplifier accessory assists in the investigation of lower-amplitude signals. The TPA-N-PRE preamplifier provides 10 dB nominal gain across the 9 kHz – 3 GHz frequency range.

Arbitrary Function Generator (optional)

The 3 Series MDO contains an optional integrated arbitrary function generator (option 3-AFG), perfect for simulating sensor signals within a design or adding noise to signals to perform margin testing.

The integrated function generator provides output of predefined waveforms up to 50 MHz for sine, square, pulse, ramp/triangle, DC, noise, sin(x)/x (Sinc), Gaussian, Lorentz, exponential rise/fall, Haversine and cardiac.

The arbitrary waveform generator provides 128 k points of record for storing waveforms from the analog input, a saved internal file location, a USB mass storage device, or from an external PC. Transfer waveform files to your 3 Series MDO edit memory via USB or LAN or using a USB mass storage device to be output from the AFG in the oscilloscope.

Digital Channels (optional)

The logic analyzer (option 3-MSO) provides 16 digital channels which are tightly integrated into the oscilloscope’s user interface. This simplifies operation and makes it possible to solve mixed-signal issues easily.

Color-coded digital waveform display

Color-coded digital traces display ones in green and zeros in blue. This coloring is also used in the digital channel monitor. The monitor shows if signals are high, low, or are transitioning so you can see channel activity at a glance without having to clutter your display with unneeded digital waveforms.

The multiple transition detection hardware shows you a white edge on the display when the system detects multiple transitions. White edges indicate that more information is available by zooming in or acquiring at faster sampling rates. In most cases zooming in will reveal the pulse that was not viewable with the previous settings. If the white edge is still present after zooming in as far as possible, this indicates that increasing the sample rate on the next acquisition will reveal higher frequency information than the previous settings could acquire.

You can group digital waveforms and enter waveform labels easily on the touchscreen. By simply placing digital waveforms next to each other, they form a group.

Once a group is formed, you can position all the channels contained in that group collectively. This greatly reduces the normal setup time associated with positioning channels individually

MagniVu™ high-speed acquisition

The main digital acquisition mode on the 3 Series MDO will capture up to 10 M at 500 MS/s (2 ns resolution). In addition to the main record, the 3 Series MDO provides an ultra high-resolution record called MagniVu which acquires 10,000 points at up to 8.25 GS/s (121.2 ps resolution). Both main and MagniVu waveforms are acquired on every trigger and can be switched between in the display at any time, running or stopped. MagniVu provides significantly finer timing resolution than comparable oscilloscopes on the market, instilling confidence when making critical timing measurements on digital waveforms.

P6316 MSO probe

This unique probe design offers two eight-channel pods, simplifying the process of connecting to the device-under-test. When connecting to square pins, the P6316 can connect directly to 8×2 square pin headers spaced on tenth-inch centers. When more attachment flexibility is required, you can use the included flying lead sets and grabbers to clip onto surface mount devices or test points. The P6316 offers outstanding electrical characteristics applying only 8 pF of capacitive loading with 101 kΩ input impedance.

Serial Protocol Triggering and Analysis (optional)

On a serial bus, a single signal often includes address, control, data, and clock information. This can make isolating events of interest difficult. Automatic trigger, decode, and search on bus events and conditions gives you a robust set of tools for debugging serial buses. The optional serial protocol triggering and analysis functionality is offered free for a 30-day trial period. This free trial period starts automatically when the instrument is powered on for the first time.

Serial triggering

Trigger on packet content such as start of packet, specific addresses, specific data content, unique identifiers, etc. on popular serial interfaces such as I²C, SPI, RS-232/422/485/UART, USB2.0, CAN, CAN FD, LIN, FlexRay, MIL-STD-1553, ARINC429, and I²S/LJ/RJ/TDM.

Bus display

Provides a higher-level, combined view of the individual signals (clock, data, chip enable, etc.) that make up your bus, making it easy to identify where packets begin and end and identifying sub-packet components such as address, data, identifier, CRC, etc.

Bus decoding

Tired of having to visually inspect the waveform to count clocks, determine if each bit is a 1 or a 0, combine bits into bytes, and determine the hex value? Let the oscilloscope do it for you! Once you’ve set up a bus, the 3 Series MDO will decode each packet on the bus, and display the value in hex, binary, decimal (USB, CAN, CAN FD, LIN, FlexRay, MIL-STD-1553, and ARINC429 only), signed decimal (I²S/LJ/RJ/TDM only), or ASCII (USB, MIL-STD-1553 and RS-232/422/485/UART only) in the bus waveform.

Event table

In addition to seeing decoded packet data on the bus waveform itself, you can view all captured packets in a tabular view much like you would see in a software listing. Packets are time stamped and listed consecutively with columns for each component (Address, Data, etc.). You can save the event table data in .CSV format.

Event table showing decoded identifier, DLC, DATA, and CRC for every CAN packet in a long acquisition.Search (serial triggering)

Serial triggering is very useful for isolating the event of interest, but once you’ve captured it and need to analyze the surrounding data, what do you do? In the past, users had to manually scroll through the waveform counting and converting bits and looking for what caused the event. You can have the oscilloscope automatically search through the acquired data for user-defined criteria including serial packet content. Each occurrence is highlighted by a search mark. Rapid navigation between marks is as simple as pressing the Previous (←) and Next (→) buttons on the screen.

Digital Voltmeter (DVM) and Frequency Counter (free with registration)

The 3 Series MDO contains an integrated 4-digit digital voltmeter (DVM) and 5-digit frequency counter. Any of the analog inputs can be a source for the voltmeter, using the same probes that are already attached for general oscilloscope usage. The DVM and frequency counter is available on any 3 Series MDO and is activated when you register your product.

The 3 Series MDO Platform

Large high-resolution touch display

The 3 Series MDO features an 11.6 inch (295 mm) wide-screen, HD display (1920 x 1080) for seeing intricate signal details.

Connectivity

The 3 Series MDO contains a number of ports which can be used to connect the instrument to a network, directly to a PC, or other test equipment.

• Front and rear USB host ports enable easy transfer of screen shots, instrument settings, and waveform data to a USB mass storage device. A USB keyboard or mouse can also be attached to a USB host port for data entry or control.
• Rear USB device port is useful for controlling the oscilloscope remotely from a PC.
• The standard 10/100 Ethernet port on the rear of the instrument enables easy connection to networks, provides network printing, and provides LXI Core 2011 compatibility.
• A HDMI port on the rear of the instrument allows the display to be exported to an external monitor or projector.

Remote connectivity and instrument control

Exporting data and measurements is as simple as connecting a USB cable from the oscilloscope to your PC. Key software applications – OpenChoice® Desktop, and Microsoft Excel and Word toolbars enable fast and easy direct communication with your Windows PC.

The OpenChoice Desktop enables fast and easy communication between the oscilloscope and your PC through USB or LAN for transferring settings, waveforms, and screen images.

The embedded e*Scope® capability enables fast control of the oscilloscope over a network connection through a standard web browser. Simply enter the IP address or network name of the oscilloscope and a web page will be served to the browser. Transfer and save settings, waveforms, measurements, and screen images or make live control changes to settings on the oscilloscope directly from the web browser.

Compact form factor

With the compact, portable form factor, you can easily move the oscilloscope between labs. And with a depth of just 5.9 inches (149 mm), it saves you valuable space on your test bench. The 3 Series MDO has all the tools you’ll need for everyday debug tasks, all in a single instrument.

Accurate high-speed probing

The 3 Series MDO ships standard with passive voltage probes and uses the TekVPI probe interface.

Standard passive voltage probes

The 3 Series MDO include passive voltage probes with industry best capacitive loading of only 3.9 pF. The included TPP probes minimize the impact on devices under test and accurately deliver signals to the oscilloscope for acquisition and analysis. The following table shows which TPP probes come standard with each 3 Series MDO model.

TekVPI probe interface

The TekVPI probe interface sets the standard for ease of use in probing. In addition to the secure, reliable connection that the interface provides, TekVPI probes feature status indicators and controls, as well as a probe menu button right on the comp box itself. This button brings up a probe menu on the oscilloscope display with all relevant settings and controls for the probe. The TekVPI interface enables direct attachment of current probes without requiring a separate power supply. TekVPI probes can be controlled remotely through USB, GPIB, or LAN, enabling more versatile solutions in ATE environments. The instrument provides up to 25 W of power to the front panel connectors from the internal power supply.