Author Topic: Which bandwidth should I choose?  (Read 7685 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline rs20

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2318
  • Country: au
Re: Which bandwidth should I choose?
« Reply #25 on: August 26, 2017, 02:42:20 pm »
Some quick charting in Excel....

Pick your poison:
(image)

Or check this out:
 https://sara.ng/apps/square-wave/

Both of these fail to simulate the phase roll-off; the oscilloscope behaves as if it has an RC filter. Hence why your pictures have post post- and pre- edge ringing, whereas a real scope only has post-edge ringing.

Not to mention that real scopes have an amplitude rolloff as well; by plotting only the sum of the first N harmonics and completely leaving out the rest; you're showing what a scope with a perfect brickwall filter would look like, not the typical first-order RC.
« Last Edit: August 26, 2017, 02:44:19 pm by rs20 »
 

Offline cdev

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 7350
  • Country: 00
Re: Which bandwidth should I choose?
« Reply #26 on: August 26, 2017, 03:16:24 pm »
For me I guess the question of whether I bought a new scope would hinge on whether I was using it for work or just for my hobby. 

You can do a lot with a cheap RTLSDR dongle as far as seeing RF and its spectral content. You know that, right?

Quote from: EdEditz on 2017-05-26, 13:38:38
Hello, My name is Eddy and this is my first post on this forum.  I'm new to the world of digital oscilloscopes (I have an old Tektronix 545 with 102 vacuum tubes in it but it's broken) and am looking to buy my first scope. Now I work a lot with RF circuits and I want to be able to see a 100MHz sine-wave on my scope with reasonable quality....
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Online tggzzz

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 19509
  • Country: gb
  • Numbers, not adjectives
    • Having fun doing more, with less
Re: Which bandwidth should I choose?
« Reply #27 on: August 26, 2017, 04:36:15 pm »


Modern digital scopes are no different than analog scopes. The sample rate (along with SinX/X interpolation) is high enough not to cause the problem you are alluding to.
So a digital scopes bandwidth roll off will basically be similar to that of an analog scope, as will be the trigger system as well.
That's what I used to think, but according to this post and video, the roll-off of digital scope is MUCH steeper.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/digital-oscilloscope-behind-the-scenes-presentation/

What bandwith you need depends on the signals you want to look at.
The 5*fc is very roughly a rule of dumb for square wave type signals, simply because of harmonics.
Although a square wave with only 5 harmonics still doesn't really look like a square wave.
You'd rather need the 9th harmonic or so.


They used to teach us that the 7th harmonic was the bare minimum to get a reasonable square wave.
That's correct, the bare minimum :)
So you want to have just a little more than that.

Consider a 1000Hz signal coming from a modern logic gate (e.g. 74lvc1g*) with a rise/falltime of ~1ns. You want to see whether the signal integrity is valid. What bandwidth do you need? Hint: it isn't 7kHz!

If you think that example isn't relevant to RF, then consider a cheap single-chip 4.4GHz frequency synthesiser with a VCO operating from 2.4-4.4GHz. If you tell it to generate a 40MHz output, that will be done by a digital divider, so the output will be a square-ish wave with edges that are sufficiently fast to generate a 4.4GHz sine wave.

More anthorpomorphically, consider that when displaying a transition, the scope neither "knows nor cares" whether the next transition occurs in 100ns,  1us, 1ms, 1s, ...

Summary: who cares about harmonics of boring square waves; all that matters is the transition time.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
Having fun doing more, with less
 

Offline Brumby

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 12298
  • Country: au
Re: Which bandwidth should I choose?
« Reply #28 on: August 26, 2017, 04:39:22 pm »
Some quick charting in Excel....

Pick your poison:
(image)

Or check this out:
 https://sara.ng/apps/square-wave/

Both of these fail to simulate the phase roll-off; the oscilloscope behaves as if it has an RC filter. Hence why your pictures have post post- and pre- edge ringing, whereas a real scope only has post-edge ringing.

Not to mention that real scopes have an amplitude rolloff as well; by plotting only the sum of the first N harmonics and completely leaving out the rest; you're showing what a scope with a perfect brickwall filter would look like, not the typical first-order RC.

The charting was simplistic.  I make no excuses about that.

What I am fascinated by is how few times I have heard people ask about the pre-edge ringing.  After all - how does the system know precisely when the transition is going to occur?
 

Offline tautech

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 28380
  • Country: nz
  • Taupaki Technologies Ltd. Siglent Distributor NZ.
    • Taupaki Technologies Ltd.
Re: Which bandwidth should I choose?
« Reply #29 on: August 26, 2017, 08:59:31 pm »
Just wondering why you would like to see a 100MHz sine on your scope? If you are working with RF a spectrum analyzer would make a lot more sense, because you will never be able to for instance tell the harmonics content just by looking at your scope screen.
+1 re Spectrum Analyser for RF work; as a Ham I would use a Spec Analyser much more often. For a bit more money both Rigol and Siglent make a nice (up to 1-3GHz) Spec An with  built in tracking generator. really useful for filters, testing amplifiers, antennas etc.
As a fellow Tek 545 owner - look after that beauty!
Robert
Small correction.  :)
Avid Rabid Hobbyist
Siglent Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@SiglentVideo/videos
 
The following users thanked this post: VK5RC

Offline Brumby

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 12298
  • Country: au
Re: Which bandwidth should I choose?
« Reply #30 on: August 27, 2017, 02:38:36 am »
(up to 1-3GHz) ....
Small correction.  :)

That reminded me of a "small correction" needed in an article in Electronics Australia many moons ago...

It talked about a magnetron operating at a frequency of 3Hz.  I think they either missed a character in publication - or that's one heck of a magnetron!
 

Offline rstofer

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 9890
  • Country: us
Re: Which bandwidth should I choose?
« Reply #31 on: August 27, 2017, 04:30:52 am »

What I am fascinated by is how few times I have heard people ask about the pre-edge ringing.  After all - how does the system know precisely when the transition is going to occur?

The Gibbs Phenomenon?  Here's where math hits the screen!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbs_phenomenon

I managed to get a great example of this on my DS1054Z the other day and I didn't write down how I did it.  I was not expecting such a textbook display.
 

Offline rs20

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2318
  • Country: au
Re: Which bandwidth should I choose?
« Reply #32 on: August 27, 2017, 07:31:13 am »
The Gibbs Phenomenon?  Here's where math hits the screen!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbs_phenomenon

Again, that page mentions nothing about phase delays or RC filters. The Gibbs phenomenon is observed in a mathematical study of Fourier series where causality is not a requirement. However, in the world of real oscilloscopes, I claim ( ;) :P ) we are slightly constrained by causality, and a zero-phase filter cannot be causal.

I managed to get a great example of this on my DS1054Z the other day and I didn't write down how I did it.  I was not expecting such a textbook display.

Are you saying that you saw ringing before the edge (as opposed to after the edge)? As Brumby has expressed, that's impossible unless a) the oscilloscope can predict the future or b) it's an artifact of (non-causal) signal processing in the oscilloscope, or c) it's not really pre-edge ringing, but some sort of strange echo artifact that looks exactly like pre-edge ringing but is actually from previous edges.
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf