Today’s electronic devices with fast FPGAs, ASICs, and other ICs rely on ever-smaller power rail voltages with tight tolerances. Engineers who incorporate these ICs into their systems need to use oscilloscopes, probes, and measurement techniques that align with today’s tight voltage rail tolerances. Making an accurate ripple measurement with an oscilloscope on a 1 V […]
oscilloscope measurements
Measurements verify power integrity
Engineers should measure and analyze power integrity on the power and ground planes of a board’s power distribution network. Understanding power integrity is crucial when evaluating circuit power quality because it has a direct influence on performance. Power integrity is a subset of signal integrity, whose assessment ensures that signals have suitable amplitude, rise time, […]
The perils of oscilloscope ground and power ground
Most electrical engineers probably are aware that connecting the ground connection for ordinary oscilloscope probes to the wrong part of an ac power line will invite a lot of trouble. Unfortunately the remedies sometimes employed to head off difficulties can cause their own woes. In a lab where I was once employed, the instrument carts […]
How to run video games on an oscilloscope
Spend enough time on YouTube and you’ll uncover numerous videos showing some kind of video game being played on an oscilloscope. The most popular game choices for these videos seem to be the old Doom and Quake games and Pong, the first real video game released in 1972. Perhaps the main reason for Doom’s popularity […]
Making better oscilloscope measurements through horizontal and vertical scaling
Early oscilloscope models were primitive by modern standards. Among the first major innovations was triggered sweep, introduced by Tektronix just in time for the post-World War Two electronics boom. This improvement in waveform imaging synchronized successive periodic waveforms to create a coherent image, based on a uniform level along the rising edge or another user-defined […]
PCIe 6.0 transmitter/receiver test setup delivers shorter test times
An intuitive new PCIe 6.0 Receiver Test Solution equips engineers to test PCIe 6.0 (Base) receivers and addresses ever-growing performance demands of the next generation of high performance systems. With this release, Tektronix provides a cohesive PCIe 6.0 transmitter and receiver test solution that delivers faster test times, higher-quality measurements, and an intuitive user interface. […]
Analyzing jitter with an oscilloscope
Jitter–basically the deviation between true and measured periodicity–is harmful beyond a certain level. In measuring jitter, we are calculating RMS, peak-to-peak deviation or spectral density. Jitter at frequencies below 10 Hz is known as wander. High-frequency signals are more prone to jitter than low-frequency signals. The deviation in periodicity that constitutes jitter may be in […]
The difference between electronic distortion and noise
The concepts of distortion and noise in signal processing overlap to a limited extent, but they are distinct phenomena. Distortion in a signal is the alteration or change of the shape or some other characteristic of the waveform. In contrast, noise is an external random signal added to the original signal. It’s harder to remove […]
Debugging digital and analog signals with cross-domain analysis
Multi-domain signal analysis is blurring the line between real-time oscilloscopes and real-time spectrum and signal analyzers. Fernando Gomez, Tektronix Inc. Multi-domain signal analysis is enabled by advanced oscilloscope features such as 12-bit ADC, digital down conversion (DDC), and flexible channel inputs where each can be either analog or digital. As Signal Integrity (SI) and Power […]
Scope-based diagnosis of three-phase motor drives
Ordinary oscilloscopes can view basic parameters in modern motor drives, but operational insights generally require specialized power analyzers. Variable frequency drives (VFD) generate carefully controlled pulse-width modulated (PWM) waveforms to modulate the speed of industrial ac motors. Often, the motors involved are three phase. Three-phase ac induction motors (ACIMs) are widely used though they are […]
