Actions
Forum Thread Details
  • Replies 8 replies
  • Subscribers 360 subscribers
  • Views 2548 views
  • Users 0 members are here
Related

Oscilloscopes: Past, Present and Future

jmarrina

Hello Folks,

I'm John Marrinan, and I'll be your visiting expert this week on all things oscilloscopes. I work as a field application engineer for Tektronix in the UK. My core job is to support our customers for complex time domain applications such as high speed serial analysis, embedded system debugging, optical telecommunications and high energy physics. I'd like to start though by giving a brief history of scopes, the role the play in society and what I think the future holds for oscilloscopes.

 

The traditional scope as we know it was based on Cathode Ray Tubes (CRTs) invented in the late 19th century by Karl Braun.  These replaced order oscillographs and galvanometers giving clearer and more efficient views of voltage over time. CRT based scopes used electrically charge, beam forming plates  to excite a phosphors coated screen with in incoming oscillating signal. By sweeping one of these sets of plates we could steer the beam across the screen, drawing the waveform. In the early 1920s they became much more common in research labs. After World War II Howard Vollum and Jack Murdock, the founders of Tektronix, invented a "triggered" giving the ability to steadily display repeating signals.

The next major advancement in scopes was the introduction of the digital storage scope in the mid-80s by Walter LeCroy. Digital scopes allowed for higher bandwidths, complex triggering, single shots and post-processing. Digital scopes are fundamentally based on A/D converters and Nyquist theorem. This technology is still the backbone of scopes today and will be into the future.

 

Today the drive in the scope market leverages improvements in signal process to integrate more of features and functionality. Logic analysis, protocol decoders, spectrum analysis are just some of these features we see today.  There still is incessant drive for more bandwidth at the bleeding edge, with applications should as coherent optics pushing bandwidths to 65GHz today, and even 70GHz or 100GHz in the near future. At these speeds T&M companies are lusing cleaver techniques such as digital bandwidth interleaving or asynchronize time interleaving to break through the limitations of A/D and Pre-amplifier technology. The bulks of scopes and scope users don’t need these bandwidth of course, but in the middle-ranges multi-domain features are such as combined protocol, scope and spectral analysis are now needed by embedded engineers to quickly integrate wireless chip sets into our ever connect world. Other trends I see are for more channels (4 phase buck converters), or modularity and shrinkage through PXI and USB.

The oscilloscopes really touches every aspect of modern life whether we know it or not. Whether it is being used as an embedded system debug tool in the design of the latest smartphone or if it is assisting in the creation of defence technologies or being used in coherent optical research for the delivery 100G , 400G or 1Tb communication links used for long haul telecommunications. The ever bandwidth hungry world of Facebook, Google and Netflix to name just a few require more and more capacity in the backbone. Research in fibre, photonics and DSP essential to this industry heavily relies on data acquisition from scopes.

The other trend in our lives is RF Everywhere. From the Internet of Things to Smartphones to Wireless access we all embrace and rely on connectivity. Bluetooth, Zigbee, RFIB and WLAN chipsets are becoming more and more pervasive in embedded system. The challenge for digital design engineers is to integrate the scary world "dbs" and "phase noise" into their "bits" and "bytes" product. Integrated scopes such as mixed signal oscilloscopes or mixed domain oscilloscopes, give engineers the tools to view the interaction between signals and system in both the time and frequency domain.

 

What's the future for scopes?! Your guess is as good as mine. What I certainly think you will continue to see is more integration of boxes on your lab bench into a single product, and I believe that this product will fundamentally be a scope. There will be more miniaturisation and improved performances in modular based scopes. And there will be a greater influence by the consumer world on the test and measurements world. By this I mean smartphone type interfaces on scopes, instrument control though tablets, and more customisation with 'widgets and  apps'.

At the very highest end of research things will stand still and there will be no change at all in my opinion…they'll just want higher bandwidths, faster sample rates and more accuracy like they've always done!!

 

I would love to hear your feedback and comments on any of these topics over the coming weeks

 

I'll also be talking about the following topics this week and next

     1. So Much More For The Student, Hobbyist and Lab Bench. How Entry Digital Scopes Now Give A Raft Of Features

    2. Integration, Integration, Integration. The Drive To Integrate More Bench Instruments Into The One Box

     3. All You've Ever Wanted To Know About A Modern Scope's Architecture

 

 

References

http://www.ehow.com/about_5817217_history-oscilloscopes.html

http://www.tek.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_storage_oscilloscope

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscilloscope#Digital_oscilloscopes

Parents

  • I agree with DAB, they have certainly come a very long way since the weak/faint trace across the screen (usually green).

     

    While a small percentage of users need all the features (along with a desire for more bandwidth) most times the requirement is much less.

    Is there a market for feature based pricing using firmware upgrades to get the extra features.?

     

    The reason I ask is that the modern DSO is realtively highly priced for new engineers or home hobbyists.

    They tend to aim for a logic analyzer when the use of a DSO could improve/assist their design or project.

     

    Access to a tool that can grow as their needs grow would encourage more use and less 'luck' in some cases.

     

     

    mark

  • in reply to mcb1

    Hi Mark,

    Thanks for the reply.

    Feature based pricing is already part of the market but it's not available across the board. In the performance space users can purchase extra hardware features such as record length, sample rate or triggers. They typically can also purchase software tools such as USB or Ethernet compliance software. A lot of the products on the market focused more at the industrial design labs also allow you to buy trigger and decode options for serial bus standards like I2C or RS232. Or power analysis tools compliance to IEC standards. And, a lot of scopes today will also offer bandwidth upgrade options (where the sample rate will allow), or the ability logic analyser capabilities. In all these cases hardware features are usually designed in up front and then unlocked as the user needed. Just as you suggest.

     

    However I think in the entry level the game is a little different. Frankly, cost is extremely important! Putting too many unused features into these models pushes up the build cost. The market is full very good companies serving the market really well and making it a very competitive space. But digital processing and integration is driving change here. For example, Tektronix have this month released the TBS1000B model. For less than $600 you can get a 2-chanel, 50MHz, 1GS/s scope, with dozens of automated measurements, datalogging and limit testing. Typically these features would be in a higher performance scope costing a few thousand dollars. My gut feeling is that this trend will continue in the entry level, with more and more features being added for free as technology allows!

     

    J

Reply
  • in reply to mcb1

    Hi Mark,

    Thanks for the reply.

    Feature based pricing is already part of the market but it's not available across the board. In the performance space users can purchase extra hardware features such as record length, sample rate or triggers. They typically can also purchase software tools such as USB or Ethernet compliance software. A lot of the products on the market focused more at the industrial design labs also allow you to buy trigger and decode options for serial bus standards like I2C or RS232. Or power analysis tools compliance to IEC standards. And, a lot of scopes today will also offer bandwidth upgrade options (where the sample rate will allow), or the ability logic analyser capabilities. In all these cases hardware features are usually designed in up front and then unlocked as the user needed. Just as you suggest.

     

    However I think in the entry level the game is a little different. Frankly, cost is extremely important! Putting too many unused features into these models pushes up the build cost. The market is full very good companies serving the market really well and making it a very competitive space. But digital processing and integration is driving change here. For example, Tektronix have this month released the TBS1000B model. For less than $600 you can get a 2-chanel, 50MHz, 1GS/s scope, with dozens of automated measurements, datalogging and limit testing. Typically these features would be in a higher performance scope costing a few thousand dollars. My gut feeling is that this trend will continue in the entry level, with more and more features being added for free as technology allows!

     

    J

Children
  • in reply to jmarrina

    John

    Thanks for the reply.

    Your TBS1000B (Model TBS1052B-EDU) is available in element14 for $581 (+ GST) which is an impressive price.

    It is limited by the 50MHz bandwidth but is certainly getting comparable with Logic Analysers.

     

    You have a Road test challenge out for its big brother/sister .... maybe element14 should have doubled the number available and used this to get the lower end of the market into the game.

     

    Thanks again

    Mark