Published on June 13th, 2014 | by Roger Chu
Perform Five Common Debug Tasks With an Oscilloscope
From input devices such mice and keyboards to smart homes and streaming media boxes, consumers demand the convenience of wireless. That demand has forced modern embedded systems to bear little resemblance to those from even a few years ago. Most system designs in production or in development today include at least one form of wireless capability such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or
ZigBee.
Testing these systems means that designers must be capable of working in a mixed domain environment, from DC to RF, with analog and digital signals, and serial and parallel buses. To meet this need, test equipment vendors are responding with integrated oscilloscopes that provide a complete set of bench instruments in a single portable package. Such oscilloscopes are capable of handling a range of common debug and verifications tasks, from detecting sources of radiated EMI to validating a switching power supply design.
In the not too distant past, making all of these measurements would have required a bench full of instruments, each with its own interface and set-up requirements. In a survey of oscilloscope users, we found that in addition to their oscilloscopes, engineers reported that they turned to the following instruments several times per month:
•Digital voltmeter: 87%
•Function generator: 68%
•Spectrum analyzer: 45%
•Logic analyzer: 33%
•Protocol analyzer: 15%
Full article by Scott Davidson, EDN Network