9 Important Things to Know When Making Sensitive Measurements with Oscilloscopes

We've routinely posted on how you can characterize your total measurement system to gain important "situational awareness" when using an oscilloscope to make sensitive measurements. The knowledge gained from these tests helps you properly interpret your measurement results so that you can deduce what is actually going on with your circuit, versus what is an artifact of the measurement system. Listed here are nine important things you should know before making sensitive measurements with your oscilloscope, with links to blog posts that instruct you how to test them.

Probing Techniques and Tradeoffs (Part VI): Dynamic Range

Figure 1: Differential-mode dynamic range is the maximum
allowable voltage between the probe amplifier's inputs

We've been discussing probe loading, which is the unavoidable reality of what happens when you attach an oscilloscope probe to a live circuit. We'll now shift the discussion to dynamic range, an important topic that can be overlooked when selecting an oscilloscope probe. There are three types of dynamic range that one should understand. Each of them will influence how you set up your probe and how you set up your signal under test to most effectively get that signal into the oscilloscope's front-end amplifier.