DSP-BASED HIGH-SPEED MEASUREMENT SYSTEM FOR HYBRID OSCILLATORS

In a conventional test setup, the electrical performance of clock osci llators is often evaluated using a Digital Storage Oscilloscope (DSO). The electrical parameters that are of interest are rise and fall time s, clock symmetry, logic HIGH voltage and LOW voltage. However, as the digital storage oscilloscope is a general purpose measuring instrumen t, these measurement processes are often slow. This paper describes th e design and implementation of a dedicated instrument set for clock os cillator testing which uses equivalent time sampling technique, distri buted processors and a Digital Signal Processor to achieve fast measur ement capability suitable for a large volume automated test environmen t.