Thursday, October 21, 2010

Understanding How a Digital Oscilloscope Works


There are many different kind of oscilloscopes. In this article I am going to explain about digital oscilloscopes. The digital oscilloscope is different from the analog oscilloscope. In the digital oscilloscope the waveform is displayed and digitalized. The voltage values are saved in time scale in the memory waves. Basically, the digital oscilloscope only repeats the process until it is finished. Some Digital Oscilloscope (DSO) selects the number of the sample stored in memory per acquisition.

DSO performs acquisition in each triggering event. The DSO regularly gets, measures, and also stores the input signal. Then, it delivers the signal through the memory in a process of: first saved - first issued while waiting for a triggering event. Once the oscilloscope is able to identify the triggering event, it takes a snapshot of the waves and then it delivers the information to the monitor. The DSO has two ways in capturing the wave. The first way is by doing a real-time sampling and the second is by performing single shot technique. The two techniques results in the footage captured of a triggering event.

A digital oscilloscope must be able to capture the input signal frequency when it performs single shot waveform. Usually a DSO has two kinds of bandwidths. The bandwidths are real-time bandwidth and analog bandwidth. Analog bandwidth shows the maximum frequency that can perform accurate snapshot within a triggering event. By using an alternative method of equivalent time sampling, a DSO can accurately capture the signals to the corner of the ribbon. Oscilloscope then receives a lot of triggering events that construct the waveform.

Most of the DSO samples the maximum rate without referencing to a time base. In certain low-speed sweeping, the DSO receives a lot more shots than its bandwidth. We can use DSO in several acquisitions mode. The DSO might delete the rest of the shots or use them for the next signals analysis.

Tektronix Digital Oscilloscope, 100 MHz, 2 Ch, Color, TDS2012B

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