Improving Measurement Accuracy with Oscilloscope Probe
Application Notes
In the past, the bandwidth and accuracy of high performance oscilloscope probes relied on their inherent hardware responses. This was typically sufficient for the performance levels needed at the time. As the later generations of probes came along, two expectations became clear; the need for higher bandwidth and the need for better accuracy. Of course higher bandwidth is needed because systems are running faster, but additionally, users want higher accuracy so they don’t have to guard band specifications as much due to measurement uncertainties.
To address this need for better performance and increased accuracy, oscilloscope systems started utilizing the measured response of probe systems to DSP correct and enhance the inherent hardware response. Initially, the data representing the probe system was a nominal or average response for the probe components. This did improve the accuracy on average, but the measurement results could still vary due to differences between a specific probe’s response and the nominal probe response.