Specifications

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glitch
An unexpected signal or portion of a repetitive waveform that is unlike the
other parts of the waveform. Glitches tend to be of short duration compared to
the signal of interest. Other terms that can indicate unexpected signals are
spike, runt pulse, or ringing.
graticule
The marked grid on an oscilloscope's screen that is used to make quantitative
measurements of a waveform's voltage and time characteristics.
grid
A synonym for graticule.
ground
A voltage reference in a circuit. The term derives from being connected to the
Earth, which is usually taken as a point of zero electrical potential.
intensity
An adjustment on an oscilloscope that controls how bright the trace is to the
user's eye.
interpolation
The method used to connect the points in a sampled waveform for display.
intrinsic noise
Noise that is caused by fundamental physical causes internal to a circuit.
Examples are the thermal (Johnson) noise of a resistor or the shot noise of
current flow.
linearity
A measure of how closely a relationship between two variables falls on a
straight line. In an analog scope, you want the sweep to be very linear so that
the time is directly proportional to the distance from the beginning of the trace.
Lissajous figure
A figure displayed on an oscilloscope in XY display mode. The horizontal and
vertical signals are typically sine waves. If their frequency ratio is a rational
number, then the display is stable.
loading
A measure of how much a signal is changed by connecting another circuit to it.
In the context of oscilloscopes, it refers to either the scope's effect on being
connected to the circuit or the effect of connecting a scope probe to a circuit.
main time base
The primary time base in an oscilloscope.
mixed signal
oscilloscope
A scope that combines the features of a digital oscilloscope and a logic
analyzer.
noise
A variation in a signal that is (usually) unwanted and conveys essentially no
useful information.
oversampling
A sampling scheme where the sampling frequency is higher than the Nyquist
limit of 2B, where B is the bandwidth of the signal to be sampled.
Oversampling can reduce aliasing.
peak detection
An acquisition mode of a digital oscilloscope that lets you see the peak values
of a signal. This is useful for getting an idea of the true peak-to-
peak voltage of
a waveform over many sweeps.
peak-to-peak
The maximum voltage minus the minimum voltage of a waveform displayed on
an oscilloscope.
period
The time for a periodic signal to repeat itself. It is equal to the reciprocal of
frequency.
persistence
The time it takes for an analog oscilloscope's phosphor to stop emitting light
after being excited by the electron beam. The longer the persistence, the
easier it is to view slow waveforms. However, a long persistence can be an
annoyance when one needs to view rapid changes in a waveform, so a
compromise needs to be struck when picking the phosphor and its
persistence.
phase
In an oscilloscope display of periodic signal, it measures the time offset of a
waveform from a reference point. If two signals have the same period, then
these signals can be shifted in time between reference points in a period. This
is referred to as phase shift or phase difference and is often measured in
degrees with 360 degrees representing a phase shift of one period.
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