05 Apr Oscilloscope-An Important Tool In The Armoury Of An Electronic Engineer
Want an instrument that would help you to design, test, service, and repair an electronic circuit? An oscilloscope is the answer for you! It is a electronic test equipment that enables waveforms in an electronic circuit and allows the tester to see the same in the electronic circuit. For any laboratory testing electronics hardware whether within RF design or general electronics circuit design, an oscilloscope is an essential. There are two types of oscilloscopes- Analog oscilloscope and Digital oscilloscope.
The name oscilloscope comes from the fact that it enables oscillations to be viewed. To get an idea of how the circuit is operating, the engineer take simply take a look at these oscillations or waveforms. Therefore, it is possible to identify potential problems within the circuit, characterize its operations over a transmission line. Oscilloscopes have evolved a lot over time. Starting from general-purpose electronics debug tools, oscilloscopes have evolved into heavy-duty signal processing machines that have now emerged as a fast and convenient analytical equipment. It is possible to capture up to 1 million waveforms per second and display them on the screen.
Measuring small currents has become increasingly important for battery-powered portable and wearable consumer devices, IoT, and medical applications. An oscilloscope helps serve this purpose. The reliance on high-performance computing systems by the automotive and communication sector has made digital designs critical and verification of corresponding systems very essential. The medical applications demand high standards regarding the product reliability. The companies developing solutions in the IoTs are small and have to cover as many cases as possible. Therefore, as the modern oscilloscopes are the suppliers of more and more analytical functions, they can cope with this pressure.
The engineers are engaged in measuring currents from the sub-miliampere up to the ampere range. The most common feature of the oscilloscope is that they allow capturing of rare events. For example the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) is a spectrum based analysis that has the capability to allow the user to perform debugging tasks at the engineer’s desk. This in turn would save a lot of money due to less iterations with in-house testing.
The major oscilloscope manufacturers maintain robust research and development departments, with many theoreticians and engineers striving to introduce enhanced instruments. However with the increasing development in technology, engineers demand new and creative approaches to connectivity as systems get smaller. Therefore, oscilloscopes need to advance more to meet performance demand, lower noise, and lower capacitive loading. Engineers want to provide higher levels of information about the signal such as ananlytical power of the source of power, decoding serial buses, measures to control signal integrity, and much more.
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