subject: How To Use Digital Oscilloscopes To Measure Special Signals part One [print this page] With the rapid development of digital technology and integrated circuits, digital storage oscilloscopes as their powerful testing capabilities, stable performance and more efficient data processing functions are used in much scientific researches and productions, have become the most effective detection of electronic circuits tool. Through viewing the key points of the circuits for voltage and current waveform on the oscilloscope, we can check directly whether circuits are working normal and whether the design is reasonable. It is helpful for improving design and products, not only depend on the advantage of the instruments, but also with the test way and the experience of engineers.
Digital oscilloscope has a high sensitivity as it with a high gain amplifier, so it can easy observe the weak signals. In aviation, aerospace, products testing in electronics, testing, the applications of digital oscilloscopes are increasingly common. Now, digital oscilloscope is no longer limited to measure the pulse parameters of the waveform, it can test the spectrum through transforming the FFT of time / frequency, as well can obtain signal jitter diagram by the clock. Therefore, it is the multi-purpose instrument which is preferred for testers.
1. Capture a random single signal pulse
Some signals appear at boot time, and disappear after start complete. How does digital oscilloscope capture these signals? Some testers may use this way: once the tested signals appeared in the screen, just press the stop button. Obviously, the success rate of this method is not high, especially for some high-speed signals. The correct way is to use a single trigger function of digital oscilloscope, so can capture the single-pulse signal automatically. For example, a common digital oscilloscope can be realized the correct measurement by the following steps:
(1) Adjust the scale of the vertical and horizontal to the range which you want to view;
(2) Press the MENU button to capture;
(3) Press ResoluTIon screen button;
(4) Select Normal acquisition resolution;
(5) Press the SINGLE SEQ (single order) button.
SINGLE SEQ button can set the trigger parameters of a single pulse correctly.
2. The optimization of capturing signals and getting data
Before we use digital oscilloscope to capture next signals, we can adjust the controls of vertical and horizontal to have a preview about how to display the signals. When adjusting the controllers, the current was reconfigured, expanded or compressed, so the preview is very helpful for having an optimization before capturing the signals.
When we have set a new scale of vertical and horizontal, we can get more signal details. When you read the data and find the data only in the screen, moreover the resolution is according to time interval, we can use the function of screen extension to capture more testing details. In addition, new type of digital storage oscilloscopes are used on WINDOWS platform which is completely open, supporting Matlab, LabVIEW, VB, VC and other software. Using these software can deal with data analysis and processing flexible.
More special measuring ways of digital storage oscilloscope will be introduced in the next article. Thank you.
