MCS Test Equipment Ltd are the UK distributors for Willtek, Tescom, Schomandl and Litepoint. We offer a wide range of leading edge test equipment products to meet the testing requirements of most wireless and Broadcast standards such as GSM, WCDMA, TETRA, WLAN 802.11, Bluetooth and WiMax 802.16. As well as offering test equipment sales, MCS also has a wide range of rental test equipment and used test equipment available.We provide high quality used test equipment for sale or rental and tailor our services to meet your individual needs.
The digital storage oscilloscope, or DSO for short, is now the preferred type for most industrial applications, although simple analogue CROs are still used by hobbyists. It replaces the unreliable storage method used in analogue storage scopes with digital memory, which can store data as long as required without degradation. It also allows complex processing of the signal by high-speed digital signal processing circuits.
The vertical input, instead of driving the vertical amplifier, is digitised by an analog to digital converter to create a data set that is stored in the memory of a microprocessor. The data set is processed and then sent to the display, which in early DSOs was a cathode ray tube, but is now more likely to be an LCD flat panel. DSOs with colour LCD displays are common. The data set can be sent over a LAN or a WAN for processing or archiving. The screen image can be directly recorded on paper by means of an attached printer or plotter, without the need for an oscilloscope camera. The scope's own signal analysis software can extract many useful time-domain features (e.g. rise time, pulse width, amplitude), frequency spectra, histograms and statistics, persistence maps, and a large number of parameters meaningful to engineers in specialized fields such as telecommunications, disk drive analysis and power electronics.
Digital oscilloscopes are limited principally by the performance of the analogue input circuitry and the sampling frequency. In general, the sampling frequency should be at least the Nyquist rate, double the frequency of the highest-frequency component of the observed signal, otherwise aliasing may occur.
Digital storage also makes possible another unique type of oscilloscope, the equivalent-time sample scope. Instead of taking consecutive samples after the trigger event, only one sample is taken. However, the oscilloscope is able to vary its timebase to precisely time its sample, thus building up the picture of the signal over the subsequent repeats of the signal. This requires that either a clock or repeating pattern be provided. This type of scope is frequently used for very high speed communication because it allows for a very high "sample rate" and low amplitude noise compared to traditional real-time scopes.
To sum this up: Advantages over the analogue oscilloscope:
Brighter and bigger display with color to distinguish multiple traces
Equivalent time sampling and Average across consecutive samples or scans lead to higher resolution down to µV
Peak detection
Pre-trigger
Easy pan and zoom across multiple stored traces allows beginners to work without a trigger
The memory of the oscilloscope can be arranged not only as a one-dimensional list but also as a two-dimensional array to simulate a phosphorus screen. The digital technique allows a quantitative analysis (E.g. Eye diagram)
Allows for automation, though most models lock the access to their software
A disadvantage of digital oscilloscopes is the limited refresh rate of the screen. On an analog oscilloscope, the user can get an intuitive sense of the trigger rate simply by looking at the steadiness of the CRT trace. For a digital oscilloscope, the screen looks exactly the same for any signal rate which exceeds the screen's refresh rate. Additionally, it is sometimes hard to spot "glitches" or other rare phenomena on the black-and-white screens of standard digital oscilloscopes; the slight persistence of CRT phosphors on analog scopes makes glitches visible even if many subsequent triggers overwrite them. Both of these difficulties have been overcome recently by "digital phosphor oscilloscopes", which store data at a very high refresh rate and display it with variable intensity, to simulate the trace persistence of a CRT scope.
Our success is based upon providing the highest levels of customer service in the test equipment marketplace. Everyone in our technical team has extensive test equipment experience and will provide you free unbiased advice.
We have over 2,000 pieces of new and used test equipment to choose from. If we haven’t got it in stock, we’ll try our very best to source it for you.
Should you wish to look at our test equipment sales or rental services, we will be pleased to help. Our test equipment rates are competitive with the best suppliers in the UK.
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Test Equipment Products
We are constantly updating our database of test equipment products, click on any of the following manufacturers to browse our latest items:
Acterna/JDSU, Adret, Advantest, Agilent - HP, AH Systems, Amplifier Research, Ando, Anritsu, AOIP, Audio Precision, Austrian Research, Bird, BMI, Boonton, Bruel & Kjaer, California Instruments, CEM, Chauvin Arnoux, Chroma, Climats, Convergie, Divers, Dranetz, Druck, EA, Efratom, EIN, EIP, ELC, Elgar, EM Test, EMCO, Enertec, Exfo, Flir, Fluke, FUG, Fujikura, Furukawa, GE Programma, Gigatronics, GMC, Goerz, Gould Nicolet, Hameg, Hioki, IFR-Aeroflex, Instek, Intec, Itech, Itronix, Kalmus, Keithley, Kepco, Kikusui, Kimo, Kyoritsu, Lambda, LECroy, LEM, Litepoint, Marconi, Mastech, MCP, Metrix, Microlab, Microtest, Milmega, Multimetrix, Narda, NetTest, Niton, Noisecom, Ophir, Panasonic, Philips, PMM, Powerbox, Prolabo, Promax, Protek, Racal, Raytek, Rigol, Rohde & Schwarz, Rotronic, Sample Instruments, Schaffner, Schlumberger, Schomandl, Secasi, Sefelec, Sefram, Solartron, Sony, Sorenson, Spinner, Stanford Research, Sunrise telecom, Svantek, Systron Donner, Tabor, Teac, Tegam, Tektronix, Tescom, Testo, Thomson, Toellner, Trend , TRT, TTI, USB Instruments, Varian, Veriwave, Voltech, Voltsch, Votsch, W/G Acterna, Wavetek, Western Graphtec, Willtek, Xantrex, Yokogawa,
If you are interested in the rental, purchase or lease of a product by a test equipment manufacturer that is not listed above then please contact us.
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