mtwieg
Advanced Member level 6
Hello, for a project I'm planning on starting in the next few months, I'll be building switching RF amplifiers at 128MHz, and it occurred to me that having good high bandwidth scope probes would be a big help, since I'll need to see waveforms at nodes which aren't 50ohm matched (the drain and gates of my transistors).
At my lab we have a Agilent DSO7054B 500MHz, 4ch scope. It's the kind which is compatible with a variety of active probes which are powered through the front panel. But one limitation I see in all of them is a limited input range +/-8V, which isn't enough for what I want to do (I'm expecting voltages up to 40V or more). And they don't seem to give any attenuator accessories. Seems like these probes are meant for high speed digital only.
So what feasible options are available? Are there third party probes with external amplifiers/power supplies which don't have this limitation? Can high quality passive probes give adequate performance? What I've noticed with using passive probes is that when I probe the same spot with two different channels, the waveforms will be different no matter how I do it (different phase and distortion), even if I carefully compensate them.
Thanks in advance.
At my lab we have a Agilent DSO7054B 500MHz, 4ch scope. It's the kind which is compatible with a variety of active probes which are powered through the front panel. But one limitation I see in all of them is a limited input range +/-8V, which isn't enough for what I want to do (I'm expecting voltages up to 40V or more). And they don't seem to give any attenuator accessories. Seems like these probes are meant for high speed digital only.
So what feasible options are available? Are there third party probes with external amplifiers/power supplies which don't have this limitation? Can high quality passive probes give adequate performance? What I've noticed with using passive probes is that when I probe the same spot with two different channels, the waveforms will be different no matter how I do it (different phase and distortion), even if I carefully compensate them.
Thanks in advance.