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SECRET WORLD OF PROBES OCt09
SECRET WORLD OF PROBES OCt09
SECRET WORLD OF PROBES OCt09
OSCILLOSCOPE PROBES
Ever wondered how scope probes really work? Most textbooks
treat scope probes as a combination of a resistive divider
in combination with capacitors to provide an extended
frequency response. But as will be revealed, the reality is that
they are much more complex in principle. Read on.
By Doug Ford
T
he oscilloscope is an essential They all have their uses but by far the equivalent circuit in Fig.1 (above
tool for anyone working in the most common is the “times ten” right).
electronics. Whether you’re (x10) passive voltage probe. Typically, The scope’s input impedance is
working in electronics service, pro- you’re given two of them free with assumed to be 1M in parallel with
duction, testing R&D or in your home every oscilloscope. a small capacitance (somewhere
workshop, you need an oscilloscope. But how much do you really know between 10pF and 50pF). Low-band-
If you listen to a bunch of technical about these probes? width scopes generally have higher
people chatting about their scopes, A few hours of Googling will yield input capacitances.
they’ll talk about their bandwidth or countless explanations about basic The capacitance of the probe cable
whether they have colour displays, operation (voltage division and ca- may be from 60pF (for a high band-
depth of memory or portability but the pacitance compensation) but you are width probe) to 200pF (for a pretty
probes rarely get mentioned. unlikely to find explanations which average probe).
In fact, most users don’t think about show the probe’s transmission-line The factor-of-ten voltage division is
their probes until they hear the sicken- properties. determined at lower frequencies by the
ing crunch underfoot which tells them Nor will you find any adequate divider formed by the 9M resistor in
they shouldn’t have left them dangling description of the design differences the tip of the probe and the 1M scope
off the bench onto the floor. between inexpensive 40MHz probes input resistance.
There are many varieties of “spe- and much dearer 350MHz probes. The compensation capacitor across
cialist” probes: active-FET probes, the 9M probe resistor is trimmed to
differential-floating probes, current- Conventional explanations be 1/9th the combined capacitances of
sensing probes are just some we could Conventional wisdom explains the scope input and the probe cable.
mention. the operation of a x10 probe with In the case above, the scope-plus-cable
frequency is usually 1kHz with an Fig. 4: Probe circuit with fixed tip capacitor.
www.siliconchip.com.au October 2009 17
calculated inductance, for a 50 line
with 83pF/m capacitance, is 208nH/m.
Since we haven’t changed the 100pF
cable capacitance, we don’t need to
change the 15pF tip capacitor or 15pF
compensation trim.
Fig.5: compensation trimmer at the scope end (left) and probe end (right). These values were punched into the
transmission line shown in Fig.6:
(350MHz and higher) tend to have their drafting program Traxmaker (a Win- The result is an awful frequency
compensation trimmers at the scope dows version of Autotrax) and a Gerber response! The effects of reflections
end of the cable. file reader at a very reasonable price. from the unterminated transmission
So far, we have given a fairly simple line will give huge response varia-
description of probe operation using Simulating a probe’s cable tions at the scope above 20MHz (green
standard textbook explanations. But We’ll replace the single 100pF cable trace). The effects of probe loading on
this ignores the fact that the probe’s capacitance with a transmission line the signal generator (yellow trace) are
cable is NOT a simple lumped capaci- in the circuit simulator. The circuit similarly large.
tance; it is a transmission line! simulator can simulate any transmis- So what do probe and scope design-
The probe’s coaxial cable has length, sion line, but we need to make a few ers do to address this problem?
distributed inductance and capaci- guesses about the circuit values to enter I have looked inside several scopes
tance, propagation delay and signal into the simulator. and probes over the years. And I’ve
reflections from unterminated ends. Typical probe cables are around trodden on a few probes in my time,
What’s the effect of these properties 1.2m long, although they can be up resulting in some sad post-mortems and
on the behaviour of a probe? to 1.8m. The total capacitance of my furtive probe replacements.
So let’s replace the lumped cable 250MHz probes is 85pF, according to Most probes have a discrete low-
capacitance in our previous simulation their manufacturer’s specifications. value resistor built into the probe tip
with a transmission line and see what The specified capacitance is 128pF extremity, located at the tip in front
happens! for my 60MHz probes, although these of the 9M divider resistor and x1/
actually measured closer to 170pF. We x10 switch.
Simulator software will use 100pF in simulations for now, I measured the end-to-end resistance
CircuitMaker is a schematic layout to maintain parity with the previous of some probes (in x1 setting) and found
and simulator program originally re- simulations of Fig.1 and Fig.4. Our values in the range 180~ 270. OK,
leased by Microcode. cable capacitance will thus be 83pF/m we will include some probe-tip resist-
I’ve been told that Microcode bought for a 1.2m cable. ance, say 250 in the simulation.
the Autotrax franchise from Protel in We will assume that the cable’s Similarly, I have seen that in some
the early 90’s. In 1998, Protel bought characteristic impedance is 50 for older scopes, there is a series 50 resis-
Microcode, then changed its name to the moment. The cable inductance (per tor between the BNC input socket and
Altium in 2001. So, CircuitMaker be- unit length) can be calculated from: the range switch. We will include this,
came an Altium product, until Altium ZO= (L/C), where L = inductance per as well. See Fig.7.
discontinued it in 2001. unit length and C = capacitance per unit The frequency response (green) is ob-
This is a pity, because this excellent length. It doesn’t matter what your unit viously smoother than in Fig.4 and the
simulator was bundled with the PCB length is; we’re using metres here. The loading effect on the source (yellow) is
B 1.2m CABLE A
R1 50 Rdiv 9M
PROBE COMPONENTS
B 1.2m CABLE A
R1 50 Rtip Rdiv 9M Rc 50
250
V1 50 lossless transmission line, Cin Rin
1.2m length: 83pF/m & 208nH/m C comp
1000Hz 15pF 20pF 1M
(i.e., 100pF total capacitance)
(GROUND CLIP)
PROBE COMPONENTS
lower. But the usable bandwidth is still covered that the cable centre core had of 165/m (200 total). We’ll also re-
less than 40MHz. Even if there was a a surprisingly high resistance. duce the value of the probe-tip resistor
clever way to smooth the response, it I dissected the cable further and was from 250 to 50. The overall probe
would still only get to maybe 100MHz surprised to discover that the core wire series resistance is still 250, as before.
before rolling off. appeared to be very thin resistance Also, I’m pretty sure that most
Tweaking the compensation capaci- wire, with a resistance of around 100 modern scopes don’t use 50 series
tor has little effect on the frequency ~ 200 per metre! See Fig.8. resistors any more, because modern
response or the transmission-line This very fine core wire appears to high bandwidth scopes have very low
resonance effects. So it is obvious that be made from a single strand and is input capacitances (10pF ~ 15pF). This
the transmission-line characteristics of “crinkled” – presumably to provide renders the scope’s 50 series termina-
the probe cable are potentially respon- tolerance to repeated flexing. I’m guess- tor pretty useless at frequencies around
sible for some serious bandwidth and ing that the white foam core insula- 80MHz, where transmission-line end-
frequency-response limitations. So, tion gives low dielectric loss, while to-end resonance is most problematic.
what is the secret behind the design the black PVC around the foam gives It’s irrelevant so let’s get rid of it from
of my 250MHz probes, and even my mechanical support to the foam (and simulations.
junkbox 60MHz probes? How DO probe no, the black stuff isn’t conductive. I Fig.9 shows the magic result: a
manufacturers manage to get extreme checked!). smooth and monotonic response,
bandwidths from probes? The high resistance of the core wire which is -3dB down at 65MHz with no
I tried all kinds of tricks in simulator- was the clue I needed. This coax cable nasty reflections or response anomalies
land to see how the transmission line is NOT low-loss; it has been made – just a smooth, usable response!
could be tamed and how the response deliberately lossy, to reduce the ef- Even more interesting: the response
could be extended. I tried variations to fects of end-to-end transmission-line of this simulation conforms quite
the cable’s characteristic impedance, reflections! nicely to the behaviour of a typical
various component combinations at I now wanted to know the identity 60MHz probe!
the tip or at the scope end of the cable; of the unknown, unsung genius who OK, so now we know the secret to de-
all to little effect. developed this trick. signing a probe: use lossy transmission-
I eventually resorted to examination So, back to simulator-land. This time, line cable! But how can the response
of the cable from a defunct probe. I dis- we’ll give the coaxial cable a resistance be extended?
First: I’ll assume that modern high-
bandwidth scopes don’t have 50
series termination.
Secondly: I’ll use the manufacturers’
specs for a 100MHz oscilloscope and
250MHz probe in the simulator.
Thirdly: I’ll assume a low-imped-
ance source, instead of the 50 source
impedance used so far.
Fourthly: when I dissected the scope-
end compensation trim of the cable
shown in Fig.8, I found that the trim-
Fig.8: probe cable dissection – note the crinkled inner wire. mer capacitor was connected in series
B 1.2m CABLE A
R1 50 Rtip Rdiv 9M
50
V1 50 lossy transmission line, C comp Cin Rin
1000Hz 83pF/m, 208nH/m & 165 /m 15pF 20pF 1M
(i.e., 100pF total capacitance &
(GROUND CLIP) 200 total resistance)
PROBE COMPONENTS
with a 68 resistor. I’ll include this at 15pF. However, we’ll increase the resistances (50/m) allow transmis-
resistor in simulations and find out value of the compensation trim to sion-line reflections to build up, giving
what it does. 35pF, because of the lower cable ca- a peaking response. Larger resistances
Then we’ll juggle the series resist- pacitance (85pF vs 100pF). (200/m) give an overdamped, sag-
ance of the transmission line in the The simulator circuit using these ging response.
simulator to see what happens! values is shown in Fig.10. The optimum cable resistance was
A 100MHz scope has an input ca- The transmission-line resistance in found to be around 115/m. This gave
pacitance of 15pF, so we’ll use this this circuit was varied from 50/m a response which is substantially flat
value at CIN. to 200/m. This is the kind of ex- to nearly 600MHz!
My 250MHz probe has a specified periment where simulators become The real bandwidth of my 250MHz
capacitance of 85pF (x1 setting), so so incredibly useful. It would be a probes would be 250MHz, rather than
we’ll set the transmission line ca- horribly expensive exercise to obtain the 600MHz shown by the simulator.
pacitance to 71pF/m. For a 50 cable, the various lossy cables which would I haven’t simulated the small stray
the calculated inductance must be be needed to conduct this series of capacitances from each component to
177nH/m. experiments at the test bench. ground or the stray capacitance across
This probe has a specified capaci- The effect of varying the cable resist- each component, which would reduce
tance of 15pF (x10 setting), so we’ll ance over the range 50 ~ 200 per the real bandwidth.
leave the value of the tip capacitor meter can also be seen in Fig.10. Low The resistor in series with the
B 1.2m CABLE A
R1 50 Rtip Rdiv 9M
50 Rcomp
V1 50 lossy transmission line, 68 Cin Rin
1000Hz 71pF/m and 177nH/m 15pF 1M
(i.e., 85pF total capacitance) C comp
but resistance varied for effect! 35pF
(GROUND CLIP)
PROBE COMPONENTS
50 Rcomp
V1 50 lossy transmission line, 68 Cin Rin
1000Hz GROUND CLIP 71pF/m, 177nH/m & 115 /m 15pF 1M
INDUCTANCE (i.e., 85pF total capacitance C comp
200nH 35pF
& 138 total resistance)
PROBE COMPONENTS
Fig.13: high-bandwidth probe with
added ground-clip inductance, with
response at right.
Conclusions
The morals of this tale are:
• Trim your probe’s compensation
capacitor!
• Textbook analyses of probe opera-
tion rarely mention transmission-
line effects but these are fundamen-
tal to the design of a probe.
• There IS a difference between low-
bandwidth and high-bandwidth
probes. High-bandwidth probes
are designed with carefully tailored
transmission-line cable and to
minimise the effects of end-to-end
transmission-line reflections. Much
more attention is paid to stray capac-
itances and build quality.
• A x10 probe will only exhibit 10M
impedance at low frequencies. The
impedance at higher frequencies
is mainly determined by the probe
compensating capacitance.
• Use identical probes with equal rise
LOW IMPEDANCE
SIGNAL SOURCE
V1
1000Hz
B
Rtip
50
200nH
C t 15pF
Rdiv 9M
GROUND CLIP
INDUCTANCE
1.2m CABLE
PROBE COMPONENTS
Rcomp
68
C comp
35pF
Cin
15pF
SCOPE INPUT
Rin
1M