Agilent powers up DC source measuring
01 May 2007
At the beginning of this month, Agilent Technologies introduced a DC power analyser that sources and measures a device under test’s DC voltage and current in minutes instead of hours. If designs can be powered up easily and DC voltage and current measurements taken faster, without a single line of code being written, it speeds up the contribution made by the R&D engineer.
The N6705A DC Power Analyser integrates up to four DC power supplies, DMM, oscilloscope, arbitary waveform generator and data logger. All sourcing and measuring functions are accessed via the front panel. Using the N6705A means that automated tests can be implemented, to decrease the time taken for the task without the hurdles of writing and debugging programs. There is no need for a PC, drivers and software as the functions and measurements are available at the front panel. This is claimed to reduce the effort of set-up by 90 per cent.
The level of integration in the Power Analyser means that there is no need for multiple equipment and the set-ups associated with each. Integral current measurements also eliminate the need for transducers, such as current probes and shunts, to measure current into the device under test. Connections
and controls are colour-coded to the display to speed set-up and control. Dedicated controls are provided for common functions.
Modules totalling up to 600W can be supported. There are 21 modules to choose from, according to an application’s requirements. Each module can be modulated via the arbitary waveform generator. Output speeds are up to 160ìsecs per step-up change. Bandwidth is up to 5kHz, sufficient to generate high-powered DC transients or simulate line ripple.
The analyser can also measure output voltage and currents via the integral DMM, oscilloscope and data logger. Long data files can be stored to a USB
memory device as an alternative to the 64Mbyte internal file storage capacity, although this in itself equates to 30minutes of data at 50,000 readings/sec on all channels simultaneously.
The analyser is compliant with the LXI Class C specification. It has USB 2.0, 10/100 Base-T Ethernet (LAN) and GPIB interfaces as standard.
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