At IMS 2026, everything RF met Ben Ellis of Pico Technology. At the company’s booth, Ben demonstrated the newly released PicoScope 5000E Series, a family of USB oscilloscopes designed for high-resolution signal analysis, embedded system debugging, and electronic test applications.
The PicoScope 5000E Series is the industry’s first four-channel 16-bit USB oscilloscope, offering 16-bit resolution across all four channels with bandwidths up to 200 MHz. The PicoScope 5000E Plus models feature switchable-resolution technology, allowing users to operate in 16-bit mode for high-precision measurements or switch to 8-bit mode to achieve bandwidths of up to 500 MHz. The oscilloscopes also offer sampling rates of up to 2.5 GS/s in 16-bit mode and 5 GS/s in 8-bit mode, enabling the capture of both low-level analog signals and high-speed digital events.
During the demonstration, Ben compared 16-bit and 8-bit waveform acquisition using an I²C serial data stream. Zooming in on a ringing edge within the signal, he showed how the additional vertical resolution available in 16-bit mode reveals small waveform details and signal integrity effects that are difficult to observe with a conventional 8-bit oscilloscope. Switching between the two operating modes highlighted the trade-off between measurement resolution and bandwidth, allowing engineers to optimize the instrument for either precision analysis or higher-speed measurements. The demonstration emphasized how the PicoScope 5000E Series combines high-resolution acquisition with flexible bandwidth options for applications such as embedded system development, digital design verification, and signal integrity analysis.
Click here to learn more about Pico Technology and the PicoScope 5000E Series.