subject: Professional Digital Oscilloscopes [print this page] O-scopes are a type of electronic testing tool that lets signal voltages be viewed as a graph on screen. These offer one or more electric potential differences plotted as functions of time or other voltages. This is one of the most versatile and commonly used electronic instruments available. When looking for the wave shape of an electronic signal, these tools are used. They are able to show the amplitude of a signal as well as distortion and frequency, time between two different events as well as relative timing of two cycles.
Professional digital oscilloscopes are available in many types from digital storage and phosphor to USB digital, portable and digital PC oscilloscopes. There are many different brands available, however digital oscilloscopes generally do the same job regardless of their type and brand. Digital oscilloscopes use an analog to digital converter so that a voltage is converted into the digital domain where it can be offered in a digital waveform display. These digital oscilloscopes can capture thousands or millions of data points and keep them stored until a waveform is able to be described and properly displayed on the unit.
There are only three classifications for digital oscilloscopes: digital storage or DSO, DPO or digital phosphor oscilloscope and sampling oscilloscopes. Each has strength and weakness over the other, therefore these must be considered when looking for your digital oscilloscopes.
USB digital oscilloscopes offer a true mixed signal oscilloscope or MSO with a 16 channel logic analyzer, and have an average of 400 MSa/s maximum real time sample rate along with a 25 GSa/s max equivalent sample rate. The memory depth of the average digital oscilloscopes for single channel is 1M points, for dual channels this averages 512K points and a 512K point logic analyzer. Many of the more popular and useful digital oscilloscopes offer dual channels with an external trigger, and bandwidths including 25, 40, 60 and 100 MHz with the USB 2.0 interface. These more popular and useful models include cursor measurements from manual to auto measure and track modes as well as including 20 automatic measurements. With built in FFT giving frequency domain representations and hardware frequency counters, the LAN interface offers all you would need. The USB digital oscilloscopes offer almost identical user interface as those of the desktop models and are easy to use.
Adjustable trigger sensitivity to filter noise from the signal, slope trigger where signal rise time or fall time can be measured as well as ultra zoom are commonly found. Standard accessories used with the digital oscilloscope includes a user manual, power adaptors and cords, probes and USB cables. Trigger modes include edge, video, slope, pattern and duration, alternative an pulse width. The most common input coupling is the DC, AC and ground with a maximum input voltage of 400 Volts peak. Some of the automatic measurements include negative duty cycle, negative width, positive duty cycle and width, rise time or fall time, overshoot and frequency, Vavg, Vmin, Vtop and Vmax to name a few.
