Whitepapers

Introduction Across military and aerospace maintenance operations, many proven test systems remain in service decades after their original deployment. These systems often support critical certification procedures, validated workflows, and platform-specific compliance tests that are costly or impractical to replace. While the airframes and missions may evolve, the test infrastructure built around them often remains indispensable. The challenge arises when key instruments inside those systems become obsolete. Aging oscilloscopes, digitizers, controllers, and interface hardware can create maintenance burdens, calibration issues, and long-term support risks. Replacing them is rarely simple. In regulated or mission-critical environments, a modern instrument must not only [...]

Introduction Advances in optical engineering are driving the need for faster, more accurate data acquisition systems. Whether characterizing laser pulses, measuring fiber optic sensors, or analyzing highspeed optical communications, today’s photonics applications generate electrical signals that demand exceptional sampling performance and timing accuracy. While the optical source may be light, the measurement ultimately depends on capturing an electrical waveform produced by a photodiode or other optical detector. Preserving the integrity of that waveform is critical, as lost detail or timing errors can directly affect measurement accuracy, image quality, or system performance. High-speed PCIe digitizers provide the bandwidth, memory depth, [...]

Introduction Photonics has become one of the fastest-growing fields in engineering, enabling advances in autonomous vehicles, optical communications, medical imaging, aerospace, semiconductor manufacturing, and quantum technologies. As these systems continue to evolve, engineers are challenged to capture increasingly complex optical signals while maintaining exceptional measurement accuracy, repeatability, and timing precision. At the heart of every optical measurement system is a detector that converts light into an electrical signal. The quality of the resulting data depends not only on the detector itself, but also on the architecture used to acquire, process, and analyze that signal. Selecting the appropriate data acquisition [...]

Introduction As signal environments become faster, more complex, and more data-intensive, engineers need acquisition tools that match the demands of modern testing. Whether validating next-generation communications systems, capturing radar pulses, analyzing ultrasound returns, or troubleshooting electronics, the quality of captured data directly impacts design confidence and test accuracy. Two of the most common signal acquisition platforms are oscilloscopes and digitizers. While both sample electrical signals and convert them into digital data, they are designed for different workflows. Oscilloscopes excel in interactive debugging and real-time waveform visualization. Digitizers are optimized for sustained acquisition, deep memory capture, system integration, and high-performance [...]