Oscilloscopes for automated testing of various power conversion devices and power supplies

The MXO Series oscilloscopes from Rohde & Schwarz are now supported by Chroma’s Power Conversion Device Automated Test System Model 8000 (ATS 8000). This integration helps address increasingly complex testing requirements in high-power and high-channel-count applications, including power systems used in AI data center infrastructure. As a result, power electronics engineers using the ATS 8000 platform for automated testing and integration can benefit from the advanced capabilities of next-generation MXO oscilloscopes for real-time waveform capture.

The growth of AI infrastructure is driving power demand in data centres and related systems. This is pushing power supply vendors to develop higher-power and higher-density designs, including systems built for the latest HVDC (High-Voltage Direct Current) power architectures. Engineers power conversion devices and power supplies rely on automated test platforms such as Chroma’s ATS 8000 to carry out automated tasks including waveform capture, debugging and calibration during power system development.

The ATS 8000 is designed for automated testing of various power conversion devices and power supplies. Chroma has now added support for the MXO Series digital oscilloscopes from Rohde & Schwarz as one of several available hardware options that can be integrated into the system. In automated power testing applications, oscilloscopes play a critical role in capturing transient behavior and dynamic waveforms in real time.

Based on MXO-EP processing ASIC technology developed by Rohde & Schwarz, the next-generation MXO Series offers waveform capture rates of up to 4.5 million acquisitions per second. This helps reduce measurement blind spots and provides a more accurate real-time representation of the signal behaviour. With advanced digital triggering, adjustable sensitivity and exceptionally low trigger jitter, the MXO can detect even very small signal anomalies with pixel-level trigger accuracy. In HD mode, the oscilloscopes support up to 18-bit resolution and input sensitivity as low as 0.5mV/div.

To meet the power demands of high-density power delivery in AI-driven data centres, a single power rack often needs to support multiple power modules, as well as battery backup units (BBU) and capacitor backup units (CBU) in series or parallel setups. These requirements can create complex measurement challenges involving more than eight channels. The MXO Series includes models with up to eight channels and supports multi-instrument synchronization through the Rohde & Schwarz ScopeSync architecture, allowing several instruments to operate in a primary-secondary setup with up to 24 synchronised channels. This capability supports debugging work and helps align manual checks with automated test results.

Thanks to Chroma’s PowerPro 5 control software, engineers can adapt the test systems to specific use cases and run external programs written in C# or Python as part of the test flow. This makes it possible to add custom analysis steps, such as decoding control frames from serial communication buses or applying product-specific calibration routines, meeting engineers’ flexibility requirements in both real-world applications and production-line environments.