The Oscilloscope Guide: How to select the right oscilloscope for your needs

Oscilloscope Applications

Oscilloscopes are used in a wide variety of different industries and applications. Here are some of the more common applications and uses for oscilloscopes today:

Power analysis - Oscilloscopes can be used to measure and analyze the operating characteristics of power conversion devices, circuits, and line-power harmonics. Differential amplifier probes are needed to this, and special software is also offered to make analysis of the data easier.

Serial data analysis - Digital data signals are moving to ever-increasing serial data formats. Oscilloscopes are used to analyze and characterize such data formats as USB, SCSI, Ethernet, Serial ATA, Fibre Channel, FireWire, Rapid I/O, InfiniBand, Bluetooth and CAN Bus (for the automotive industry).

Jitter analysis. - Today, high-bandwidth circuits have extremely fast clocks and signals. Oscilloscopes are used to characterize and debug signal jitter as well as timing for clocks, clock-to-data and datastream analysis.

Data storage device testing. - Oscilloscopes are used to test CD/DVD and disk drive designs by measuring disk performance, media noise and optical recording characteristics.

Time-domain reflectometry. - Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR) is a way to measure impedance values and variations (such as faults) along transmission cables, cables connectors or microstrips on a circuit board.