Oscilloscope Electronic Circuits

Oscilloscope Circuits
Last Updated on: Saturday, June 27, 2009 04:43 PM

Links to electronic circuits, electronic schematics, designs for engineers, hobbyists, students & inventors:

Aliasing aids signal analysis: 09/15/94 EDN Design Ideas / (added 11/05) Common wisdom decrees that digital-oscilloscope users must always guard against aliasing by choosing a sampling rate that is several times highest frequency component of signal you are measuring. But, if you are analyzing narrowband intermediate-frequency (IF) signals in radios, pagers, and wireless communicators, you can make aliasing work for you instead of against you....

Calibrate scope jitter using a Transmission line loop: 09/20/01 EDN Design Ideas / (added 1/05) Digital-clock-period jitter is variation in period of a clock cycle compared with a nominal (average of many cycles) clock period. To accurately ....

Debugging a PCI Bus with a Mixed-Signal Oscilloscope (5988-7745EN): Aligent Application Note (added 2/06)

Debugging with Combined Oscilloscope and Logic Analyzer Measurements: Agilent Application Note (app note added 6/06)

Delay line upgrades vintage scope: 04/18/02 EDN Design Ideas / (added 1/05) Vintage triggered-sweep oscilloscopes find use in many applications. However, they have no internal delay line, so they can't display the pulse that triggers the sweep. Moreover, early laboratory scopes contain delay lines having insufficient delay to display such pulses during a uniform portion of the sweep. ...

Delay Simulator Debugs Communications Equipment: 10/27/94 EDN-Design Ideas / (added 3/03) Phone calls over satellite circuits experience a ¼-sec transmission delay in each direction. The low-cost circuit (around $20) in Fig 1a simulates this delay and provides hooks for inserting noise, echo, and other impairments. Designers debugging modems, fax machines, and other communication equipment can use this circuit to troubleshoot handshake timing and connection problems caused by transmission delays.

Digital PC Oscilloscope: (electronic circuit added 4/05)

DSO Triggering Scheme is Cheap and Efficient: 05/07/98 EDN-Design Ideas / (added 3/03)

Finding Hidden Problems using Agilent�s Deep-Memory Oscilloscope: How IBM Solved a Mystery (EPSG090979): Aligent Application Note (added 2/06)

Jitter Analysis Techniques using an Agilent Infiniium Oscilloscope (5988-6109EN): Aligent Application Note (added 2/06)

LED Oscilloscope: Uses a matrix of 100 LED as a display (circuit added 11/06)

Light Sensor Adapter for Oscilloscope: LED brightness control circuit and a multimeter to compare light levels to LED level. (added 4/05)

Mixed Analog and Digital Signal Debug and Analysis using a Mixed-Signal Oscilloscope (5988-7746EN): Aligent Application Note (added 2/06)

Modified Scope Probe Tests SurfaceMount Assemblies: 09/25/97 EDN-Design Ideas / (added 3/03)

Multiplexer Creates Mixed Signal Scope Input: 01/16/97 EDN-Design Ideas / (added 08/05) When you work with mixed-signal designs, it's often useful to view the timing of several analog and digital channels on the scope at once. Figure 1 accomplishes this task using two buffered multiplexer ICs and two TTL logic chips. IC1 and IC2 each combine a four-channel multiplexer with an op-amp on the output. The output of the multiplexer connects to the noninverting input of the op amp, and the inverting input is available as an external pin on the IC. This feature allows the multiplexer to have a buffered output and allows each channel to have different gain.

Oscilloscope Probing of PC133/Rambus Circuits: Pericom Semiconductor Application Note # 021 (app note added 2/05)

PC-Based Oscilloscope: (electronic Circuit / Schematic added 10/04)

Scope Probe Measures High Frequencies: 01/18/96 EDN-Design Ideas / (added 08/05) Measuring clocks and critical signals accurately is often inconvenient. Normal 10× probes usually have about 10 pF of input capacitance, which can considerably affect the signal. FET probes with 1 to 3 pF of input capacitance are expensive and often require an extra power supply or other special setup. Unless ground leads are short (10 to 20 mm), these leads introduce considerable distortion to most probes.

Simple light sensor adapter for Oscilloscope: (electronic circuit added 4/05)

Under Sampling Extends utility of Digital Scopes: 04/09/98 EDN-Design Ideas / (added 3/03)

USB Pre-Compliance Testing with Agilent Infiniium: Agilent Application Note (added 6/06)

Use a Trick to Count Scope Events: 01/21/99 EDN-Design Ideas / (added 11/05) One advantage digital storage oscilloscopes (DSOs) have over analog scopes is trace persistence. You can easily see infrequent waveform features using a scope in infinite-persistence mode. However, the frequency of these features relative to that of a "normal" signal can sometimes be less than obvious. You may wonder, does that glitch appear 10% or only 1% of the time? And how often does that short clock cycle occur? When you take trace noise into account, even a color-gradded display does not directly or accurately give the information. A histogram is the most accurate way to give the information, but it requires time and expertise. The following hint provides a quick way to determine, using a DSO, how often each of two waveforms occurs....

Verifying Bluetooth? Baseband Signals using Mixed-Signal Oscilloscopes (5988-2181EN): Aligent App Note (added 2/06)