Evaluating Oscilloscopes for Low-Power Measurements
Application Notes
Introduction
Increasing market demand for products that are portable, mobile, green, and that can stay powered for long periods of time is driving a change in new-product innovation. It’s low power, not performance, that is king. The ever-increasing need for power reduction drives engineering teams to devise innovative methods and architectures. The low-power mega trend has resulted in a changing landscape for devices, sub-systems, and system-level products. A key requirement to fuel low-power innovation is the ability to measure and characterize device and sub-system power consumption. Oscilloscopes designed with innovative technologies for addressing the challenges of low-power measurements can be a huge boost in an engineer’s ability to gain insight, understand, debug, and characterize those designs.
This application note articulates key low-power measurement attributes for oscilloscopes including software features and probes. It will use the Keysight Technologies, Inc. Infiniium S-Series oscilloscopes and N2820A current probe in examples. The principles in this application note can be applied to all oscilloscopes used for low-power measurements.