Advantages and Disadvantages of Digital Oscilloscopes
An oscilloscope is a very versatile electronic measuring instrument. It can transform invisible electrical signals into visible images, making it easier for people to study the changing processes of various electrical phenomena.
Digital oscilloscopes are high-performance oscilloscopes manufactured by a series of technologies such as data acquisition, A/D conversion, and software programming. Digital oscilloscopes generally support multi-level menus and can provide users with multiple choices and analysis functions. There are also some oscilloscopes that can provide storage to save and process waveforms.
Digital oscilloscope advantages
1. Small size, light weight, easy to carry, LCD display
2. It can store waveforms for a long time, and can amplify the stored waveforms and other operations and analysis.
3. Especially suitable for measuring single and low-frequency signals. There is no flickering phenomenon of analog oscilloscopes when measuring low-frequency signals.
4. More triggering methods, in addition to pre-triggering that analog oscilloscopes do not have, there are also logic triggers, pulse width triggers, etc.
5. Can be connected to computers, printers, and plotters through GPIB, RS232, and USB interfaces, and can print, archive, and analyze files. 6. It has powerful waveform processing capabilities and can automatically measure many parameters such as frequency, rise time, and pulse width.
Disadvantages of digital oscilloscopes
1. The distortion is relatively large. Since the digital oscilloscope displays the waveform by sampling the waveform, the fewer the sampling points, the greater the distortion. There are usually 512 sampling points in the horizontal direction, which is limited by the maximum sampling rate. At and near the fastest scanning speed There are fewer sample points, so there is more distortion at high speeds.
2. Poor ability to measure complex signals. Due to the limited number of sampling points of the digital oscilloscope and the lack of brightness changes, many waveform details cannot be displayed. Although some may have two or more brightness levels, this is only a relative difference. , coupled with the limited display resolution of the oscilloscope, it still cannot reproduce the effect of the analog display.
3. Artifacts and confusing waveforms may occur. When the sampling clock frequency is lower than the signal frequency, the displayed waveform may not be the actual frequency and amplitude. The bandwidth of a digital oscilloscope is closely related to the sampling rate.
