With the USB-C connector becoming universally deployed in consumer electronics, the USB-C Chassis Probe is a critical tool for verifying signal integrity, debugging communication issues, or characterizing cable and connector interfaces.
The USB-C Chassis Probe can measure 10 signal wires simultaneously, and this corresponds to 4 USB 20Gbps differential lanes (or main link DisplayPort lanes in Alt-Mode) and 2 Sideband Use (SBU) pins (or DisplayPort AUX lane in Alt-Mode). The primary passthrough path on the chassis probe creates a direct connection between two USB-C devices. Then, a secondary fanout path uses proprietary sensing technology to create a replica of the source signal, allowing for analog and digital analysis of live traffic on the bus without loading the primary USB-C signals.
The USB-C Chassis Probe is useful for engineers doing system-level testing (whether on smartphones, laptops, tablets etc) or chip-level testing (such as display ICs, GPUs, and CPUs). By eliminating any digital buffer or repeater circuitry, the chassis probe is a true active probe, and it does not interfere with any link training between the two ends of a link under test. And because all channels are probed simultaneously in one enclosure, users do not need to work with individual probes. Finally, with a high impedance and a linear response on the active probing path, this solution is an ideal tool for any USB-C testing setup as well as for real-time oscilloscope analysis.