This presentation is a quick introduction to oscilloscopes. It explains the different types of oscilloscopes, their main characteristics, and the basic operations to configure your oscilloscope.

1. An introduction to oscilloscopes
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2. What is an oscilloscope ?
¤ Oscilloscope are devices made to observe time-varying
voltage signals
¤ They can be considered as the most important
measurement devices in any lab
¤ They are used in many domains : engineering, but also
medicine, and science in general

3. Basics of measurement
¤ There are different analog quantities we can measure
with an oscilloscope :
¤ Information about the voltage trace : mean value,
amplitude, maximum value …
¤ Information about time : frequency of the signal, some
oscilloscopes can also directly compute a Fourier transform
of the signal
¤ Some digital oscilloscopes can also analyze digital
signals, like decode USB frames

4. Different kind of oscilloscopes
¤ Analog oscilloscopes
¤ The oldest type of oscilloscopes
¤ Consist of a cathode ray tube and amplifiers
¤ They operate by projecting the voltage trace to a screen via
an entirely analog process

5. Different kind of oscilloscopes
¤ Digital oscilloscopes
¤ Employ Analog-to-Digital Converters to sample the signal
and display it on a LCD screen
¤ Have usually more functions than the analog oscilloscopes,
like storage, automatic measurements, and computation of
simple function on the acquired signals (FFT …)

6. Different kind of oscilloscopes
¤ USB oscilloscopes
¤ These are similar to the digital oscilloscopes, but rely on your
computer to operate it & display the data
¤ They are usually much cheaper and more portable than
digital oscilloscopes
¤ However, usually they have lower performances compared
to a typical digital oscilloscope

7. Main characteristics
¤ As they are the most commonly used today, especially
for portable oscilloscopes, we will talk about some
characteristics of digital oscilloscopes
¤ Bandwidth : it is a measure of the maximum frequency
that can be measured and displayed with the
oscilloscope. It is usually the frequency at which the
attenuation reach -3 dB
¤ Sampling rate : the maximum number of measurement
points per second that the oscilloscope can acquire

8. Operating your oscilloscope
¤ There are basically two main parameters to set when
using an oscilloscope : the voltage axis, and the time axis
¤ Setting the voltage axis is done via the volts/div knob. You
will usually set it to display the voltage trace on the whole
screen of the oscilloscope.

9. Operating your oscilloscope
¤ The other knob to set is the time/div knob. If you are
observing a periodic signal, use it to set the time axis so
that you see some periods of the signal on the screen.

10. Thank you !
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