The NK732 is a high performance time and frequency measurement instrument. Its high resolution and through¬put, combined with continuous measurement capability, allow you to make measurements that are not possible with traditional time-interval counters. For example, it can timetag events (edges of an input pulse train) at a rate of 20 million per second continuously to on-board memory, while each of the edges is measured with 2 ps resolution. This provides it with the capa¬bility to analyze the dynamic variations in pulse timing, pulse width, or frequency. In other words, the difference be¬tween time interval analyzers and traditional counter/timers is analogous to the difference between voltmeters and scopes. Measure¬ments can also be streamed continuously in real-time over the PXIe interface allowing unlimited acquisition at high rates.
The NK732 is a full instrument-on-a-card with all the features and capabilities you would expect in bench-top instruments including high quality inputs, built-in NIST traceable calibration, and software and hardware that deliver fully com-puted results. The instrument has 10 measurement functions such as Fre¬quency, Time Interval and Pulsewidth. All functions work di¬rectly on the input signal at frequencies up to 500 MHz without any prescaling. This means that you can measure pulses as narrow as 1 ns, occurring at frequencies up to 500 MHz, or the skew between two signals at 500 MHz. There is also an optional prescaler for each input channel which allows frequency, period, and TIE measurements to 6.0 GHz.
The inputs of the instrument include programmable termina-tion voltages. This feature is seldom found even in the best of the bench-top instruments. The 50 ohm inputs are 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 instrument with the proper loading. This feature is especially useful in semiconductor ATE and other test systems.
