Oscilloscope Basics & Background

LeCroy oscilloscope WD2000Oscilloscopes have been invented in the 1920s. Up to now this instrument encountered many innovations.  In the beginning the most important manufacturers have been General Radio, DuMont, General Electric and Radio Corporation of America. Later Cossor and later Solartron dominated the market. Today the main players are Keysight, Tektronix and Teledyne LeCroy. Below we listed some important oscilloscope milestones.

Rohde & Schwarz oscilloscope used for EMI debuggingOscilloscopes featuring high sensitivity and dynamic range combined with powerful FFT capabilities are ideal tools for EMI debugging. Electromagnetic interference from electronic circuits and boards can be detected and analyzed with high speed and accuracy.

Agilent oscilloscope Probe BandwidthIn oscilloscopes or oscilloscope probes, bandwidth is a measure of the width of a range of frequencies measured in Hertz. Specifically, bandwidth is specified as the frequency at which a sinusoidal input signal is attenuated to 70.7 percent of its original amplitude, also known as the -3 dB point. Most oscilloscope companies design the scope/probe response to be as flat as possible throughout its specified frequency range, and most customers simply rely on the specified bandwidth of the oscilloscope or oscilloscope probes, wondering if they are indeed getting the bandwidth performance at the probe tip. Now you can use these step-by-step instructions to simply measure and verify the bandwidth of your probe with an oscilloscope you may already have.

AA PhaseNoise CaptionOften clock jitter induced from the power supply noise, signal routings, or other signals severely degrade the performance of the system. Clock generation and distribution in a FPGA for a high speed analog application is particularly prone to these issues. They manifest themselves in phase noise or clock jitter, which is the random variation of the period of a signal over time. Clearly, optimization of the design requires verification of the integrity of such clocks.

  1. Digital Debugging - better using a Mixed-Signal-Oscilloscope or a Logic Analyzer?
  2. Precision Phase Noise Measurement Technique - Part 2
  3. A Comparison between Oscilloscopes and Spectrum Analyzers
  4. Digitizer and Oscilloscope - Equal Alternatives?
  5. 10 Tips for selecting an Oscilloscope
  6. Oscilloscope Probes – Vital Link in the Measurement Chain
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