TABLE OF CONTENTS Only a few types of test equipment apply to the high-speed differential systems of interest here. These include oscilloscopes, network analyzers, time domain reflectometers, and the peripheral devices that are used with these. This chapter introduces the most important of these, adds a bit of detail about what each does, and offers precautions you should be aware of. Some practices will make a person unwelcome in most microwave labs. Other practices are standard and should always be followed. This chapter points them out.
The oscilloscope is a tool that is familiar to almost every engineer. Yet, in microwave applications, some aspects are likely not familiar. An objective of this chapter is to describe and explain some of these unfamiliar aspects. First off, there are two types of oscilloscope: analog and digital. For events that occur in nanoseconds of time, analog oscilloscopes are seldom used. There are two types of digital oscilloscope: real-time and sampling.
The typical real time digital oscilloscope is a device that samples data at a very high clock rate. It may use a very fast analog-to-digital converter to measure voltages at a series of consecutive, closely-spaced time slots.
These measurements can be done in a number of ways. Some employ multiple flash converters to sample data at alternating time samples. One converter samples the first time slot, the next converter takes the next time slot, and so on. This enables n converters to achieve a data conversion rate that is n times...
