Troubleshooting Distributed Power Systems (Part 8): Making Time Domain Measurements

Focus:

There are inherent challenges in measuring power supply waveforms in the time domain. Limitations in oscilloscopes and probes, difficulties imposed by linear time and amplitude scales, and even seemingly helpful scope features like trace averaging can either degrade measurement fidelity or hide “glitches” and waveform anomalies that can wreak havoc with system performance. In this last installment of the video series, Steve Sandler delves further into the subject of how to make time-domain measurements of power supply signals, providing further discussion on the sources of measurement error and many examples of noise and stability problems that engineers may be missing. Sandler dispenses techniques and tips on how to observe hard-to-spot problems and how to make higher-fidelity measurements in general. Even experienced power supply designers may be disappointed to hear that their oscilloscopes are underpowered with respect to bandwidth and sampling speeds. As with the earlier videos, this one is not just for power supply designers, but for any circuit designers concerned with power integrity in their system designs.

What you’ll learn:

• How to make high-fidelity measurements of power supply waveforms using oscilloscopes
• How to spot and diagnose anomalies in power supply waveforms

Notes:

The material in this part 8 video is closely related to the material covered in part 6 (The Switch Node) and part 7 (Measuring Ripple) of the Troubleshooting Distributed Power Systems video series.

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Author & Publication:

Steve Sandler, AEi Systems and Picotest, Phoenix, Ariz., How2Power Today, Jan 16 2014

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