China's oscilloscope industry to the middle and high-end progressive

The oscilloscope industry in China must compete for a place under the conditions of market economy. It must not only accurately analyze the current status and development trend of foreign companies, but also carefully analyze the domestic market and demand conditions, and should not blindly follow the trend, but should analyze its own actual level of truth and truth. Research and development products that meet the characteristics of the Chinese market and meet the needs of Chinese users at all levels.

The oscilloscope is an electronic time-domain measuring instrument and has a wide range of applications in the field of measurement. Whether it is the development, experiment, training, manufacturing, fault diagnosis, test or testing of electronic circuits and electronic information systems, oscilloscopes can be seen everywhere. .

Multi-directional development towards high bandwidth and high sampling rate

With the continuous innovation and development of information and communication technologies and the constant introduction of various industry standards, the technical and environmental requirements for R&D, design, and production of terminal products such as communication equipment, computers, and consumer electronics are also increasing. The application of oscilloscope also put forward higher requirements.

Han Gucheng, deputy general manager of Jiangsu Luyang Electronic Instrument Group Co., Ltd., said in an interview with reporters that oscilloscopes are basic instruments in the field of measurement, and its development must be adapted to the needs of the rapidly developing electronic information industry. The development trend of oscilloscope technology mainly has the following points: From the performance point of view, first, to the development of high bandwidth, high sampling rate, the most representative T70000 series and 8000 series, the maximum bandwidth can be achieved 20GHz, the sampling rate of 50GS/ s indicates that the oscilloscope can perform high-speed measurement and quasi-real-time analysis of microwave and optoelectronic signals. Second, the oscilloscope waveform capture rate is greatly improved. The capture rate is increased from several thousand frames per channel 10 years ago to 300,000 per channel. Frames, which provide a quick lookup and effective statistical analysis of random and occasional intermittent faults in the underlying information system of the search information system, improve the efficiency of fault diagnosis. Third, the conflict between sampling rate and memory depth has been resolved. The sampling rate is high, and the storage capacity is low. Currently, ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) design techniques for high-speed large-scale FPGAs (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) with built-in high-performance microprocessor CPU and RAM (Random Access Memory) are used. And using fast segmented storage technology and hard disk storage to solve this conflict. The core processing system of modern oscilloscope signals: "acquisition storage --- processing analysis --- display control" works in parallel in the whole process. The streamlining operation is implemented in hardware, and the application of other new technologies has now been implemented at the highest sampling rate and high. In the case of the capture rate, the real-time storage depth is greatly expanded. Agilent's DSO/DSA90000A series oscilloscopes have achieved a storage depth of 1G per channel at a sampling rate of 40GS/s, achieving complete capture and accuracy of high-speed massive data. Real-time display and parameter analysis.

From the point of view of the test function, with the rapid development of electronic information equipment and the diversification of test requirements, the oscilloscope also continues to develop in the direction of multi-function. Nowadays, digital storage oscilloscopes are not only time-domain measuring instruments, but also extend to multi-domain measurement. Utilizing high-performance microprocessors and ASICs, multiple nodes of the system under test can be simultaneously in the frequency domain, data domain, and statistical domain. Perform measurements and analysis. At present, the function classification of the oscilloscope has been very vague, and the basic universal measuring instruments such as oscilloscopes and signal sources can be integrated in one system, and the synthesis trend of the functions is obvious.

Li Hailong, a general-purpose digital oscilloscope application engineer at LeCroy China, stated that in the future, digital oscilloscopes will be developed in two directions at the same time: continuously improve basic performance including front-end analog bandwidth, real-time sampling rate, waveform processing speed, and larger waveform storage capacity. Meet the needs of the rapid progress of the electronics industry; meanwhile, test instruments including oscilloscopes should be more humanized, more convenient and more effective to be operated by users, and more abundant software features should be added to the oscilloscope platform in order to cater for increasingly diversified customer applications. Needs.

Domestic manufacturers should start from the low end and gradually move towards the middle and high end

In recent years, domestic manufacturers have achieved very good results in digital oscilloscope market development and technological innovation, but compared with foreign large companies, domestic companies still have a big gap, such as products mainly for low-end markets, low technology content The profit is also low.

According to industry insiders, if domestic companies want to survive in this market, they must develop high-end products.

Assistant President Xie Zhenbao of RIGOL made the following analysis for the reporter. He said that according to the bandwidth, the oscilloscope can be simply divided into three different markets: low-end, mid-end, and high-end. Under normal circumstances, the following 500MHz for the low-end oscilloscope market, 500MHz-1GHz for the mid-range market, more than 1GHz for the high-end market. In 2007, the low-end market accounted for the largest proportion, with shipments approaching 80% of the total market. The market value ratio was close to 50%; the mid-market shipments exceeded 15%, and the market share was about 33%; high-end oscilloscopes accounted for only About 5% of shipments, due to relatively high prices, accounted for 17% of the market.

He said that from the data it can be seen that the largest market share is in the low-end oscilloscope market, and RIGOL's current main target is precisely this market. This market has a wide range of distribution and many technical applications. It poses severe challenges to the general capabilities of oscilloscopes. If domestic product technologies have stood the test in this market and continuously tempered, the technology can precipitate deeper and thicker, and on this basis, the The march to the mid-range oscilloscope to form a technical transition and sublimation, then 80% of the market will be ready, which is very challenging and very attractive. In short, taking a route from the low end to the high end is more suitable for Chinese companies, and it is more suitable for China’s technological development status and more suitable for China’s market needs.

Yin Xiaogang, director of the Embedded Test Project Department of Shanghai Yokogawa International Trade Co., Ltd., told reporters that Chinese oscilloscope manufacturers should move forward in the mid-to-high end product market. There is no short cut to go. We must make long-term and substantial investment in research and development to constantly improve ourselves. The research and development capabilities strive to develop high-end acquisition and processing chips with independent property rights as soon as possible.

At the same time, he believes that China's oscilloscope manufacturers should further improve the production process, through the cooperation with some large foreign companies or through their own continuous summary and improvement, improve their own level. “The oscilloscope products from domestic manufacturers have more advanced features. If you don’t have a very good quality guarantee, you will eventually lose users.” He finally stressed. "China's oscilloscope industry must compete for a place under the conditions of a market economy. It must not only accurately analyze the status quo and development trends of foreign companies, but also carefully analyze the domestic market and demand conditions, and be able to do what it can, not blindly follow the trend, should seek truth from facts At his own practical level, R & D products that meet the Chinese market characteristics and meet the needs of Chinese users at all levels." Han Gucheng told reporters, "No matter how the oscilloscope function develops, first of all, the oscilloscope system should be done well." He emphasized that China's oscilloscope industry The industry still has the ability to research and develop high-end oscilloscopes. There is also an opportunity to participate in market competition. The oscilloscope machine develops to high performance. The realization of the technology depends on the rapid development of microprocessors and the rapid development of high-speed and large-scale FPGAs and the decline in prices. This is the research and development of most mid-range general-purpose oscilloscopes and has been entered at a higher price/performance ratio. Market competition provides the technical foundation, and the oscilloscope microprocessors and their processing chips can be purchased globally. This is not a problem. The problem is that the domestic oscilloscope process design, material application and reliability are still far from those of foreign countries. Big, it needs oscilloscope industry to make great efforts to solve.