The difference between analog and digital

February 09, 2021

An oscilloscope is a widely used electronic measuring instrument. It can transform the invisible electrical signals into visible images, so that people can study the changes of various electrical phenomena. The oscilloscope can be used to observe waveforms of various signal amplitudes over time, and can also be used to test various types of power, such as voltage, current, frequency, phase difference, amplitude, and so on.

Oscilloscopes can be divided into analog and digital oscilloscopes.

The difference between analog and digital

Analog scope

An analog oscilloscope works by measuring the signal voltage directly and plotting the voltage in the vertical direction through an electron beam that passes through the oscilloscope screen from left to right.

Digital scope

The digital oscilloscope works by converting the measured voltage into digital information through an analog converter (ADC). The digital oscilloscope captures a series of samples of the waveform and stores the samples. The storage limit is to determine whether the accumulated samples can draw the waveform. Then, the digital oscilloscope reconstructs the waveform.

First, simulation and numbers, each has its own merits

The 1940s was the era of electronic oscilloscopes. The development of radar and television required a good waveform observation tool. The synchronous oscilloscope with a bandwidth of 100MHz was successfully developed, which is the basis of modern oscilloscopes. The advent of semiconductors and electronic computers in the 1950s promoted the bandwidth of electronic oscilloscopes to 100MHz. In the 1960s, the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom, and France all had different contributions in the development of electronic oscilloscopes. The 6 GHz sampling oscilloscope and the 6 GHz multi-function plug-in oscilloscope marked the high level of science and technology at that time. Add logic oscilloscopes and digital waveform recorders. Since then, analog oscilloscopes have not made much progress, and they have begun to give way to digital oscilloscopes. The UK and France have even withdrawn from the oscilloscope market. The technology is leading the United States, and the middle and low-end products are produced in Japan.

To increase the bandwidth of an analog oscilloscope, oscilloscope, vertical amplification, and horizontal scanning are required to fully advance. To improve the bandwidth of a digital oscilloscope, it is only necessary to improve the performance of the front-end A/D converter, and there are no special requirements for the oscilloscope and the scanning circuit. Plus digital oscilloscopes make full use of memory, storage and processing, as well as a variety of triggering and lead triggering capabilities. In the 1980s, digital oscilloscopes sprang up and the results were numerous. They greatly replaced the potential of analog oscilloscopes. The analog oscilloscopes really retreated from the foreground to the background.

However, some features of analog oscilloscopes are not available in digital oscilloscopes:

The operation is simple - all operations are on the panel, the waveform response is timely, and the digital oscilloscope often takes a long processing time.

High vertical resolution - continuous and infinite, digital oscilloscope resolution is generally only 8 to 10 bits.

Fast data updates—hund hundreds of thousands of waveforms per second, and digital oscilloscopes capture dozens of waveforms per second.

Real-time bandwidth and real-time display—The bandwidth of a continuous waveform is the same as that of a single waveform. The bandwidth of a digital oscilloscope is closely related to the sampling rate. When the sampling rate is not high, interpolation calculation is needed, which is prone to confusing waveforms.

In short, analog oscilloscopes provide engineers with a visionary waveform that can be tested with confidence within the specified bandwidth. In the human facial features, the eye vision is very sensitive, and the waveform of the screen is instantly reflected to the brain to make judgments, and the microscopic changes are perceptible. Therefore, analog oscilloscopes are very popular among users.

Second, the digital oscilloscope dominates

The digital oscilloscope of the 1980s was in the transformation stage, and there were still many places to improve. TEK and HP in the United States all contributed to the development of digital oscilloscopes. They later discontinued the analog oscilloscope and only produced a good performance digital oscilloscope. In the 1990s, in addition to increasing the bandwidth to more than 1 GHz, digital oscilloscopes have more comprehensive performance than analog oscilloscopes. The phenomenon of so-called digital oscilloscope simulation appears. In other words, the advantages of analog oscilloscopes are absorbed as much as possible, making digital oscilloscopes better.

The digital oscilloscope first increases the sampling rate from the initial sampling rate equals twice the bandwidth to five or even ten times, and the distortion introduced by the corresponding sine wave sampling is also reduced from 100% to 3% or even 1%. The sampling rate of 1 GHz bandwidth is 5 GHz or even 10 GHz.

Secondly, improve the update rate of the digital oscilloscope to the same level as the analog oscilloscope, up to 400,000 waveforms per second, which is much more convenient for observing sporadic signals and capturing glitch pulses.

For most electronic applications, both analog and digital oscilloscopes are capable, but for some specific applications, due to the different characteristics of analog oscilloscopes and digital oscilloscopes, suitable and unsuitable places will appear. Each step of the oscilloscope will have certain characteristics and some shortcomings. You should pay attention to the comparison when selecting the model.

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