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US 10,707,673 B2Granted
Protection circuit for oscilloscope measurement channel
AssigneeFord Global Technologies, LLC
InventorsChingchi Chen, Richard William Kautz, Krishna Prasad Bhat
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A system includes a surge protection circuit electrically connected via a signal transmission line between a source and an oscilloscope, and including a diode configured to be reverse biased, responsive to a voltage of the source being less than a threshold, to decouple an impedance of the circuit from the transmission line and forward biased, responsive to the voltage being greater than the threshold, to couple the impedance to absorb excess energy of the voltage.
Claims7
A system comprising:
- a surge protection circuit electrically connected via a signal transmission line between a source and an oscilloscope, and including
- a pair of energy absorbing elements, wherein an anode of one of the energy absorbing elements and a cathode of the other of the energy absorbing elements share a common terminal,
- a diode configured to be
- reverse biased, responsive to a voltage of the source being less than a threshold, to decouple one of the energy absorbing elements of the circuit from the transmission line, and
- forward biased, responsive to the voltage being greater than the threshold, to couple the one of the energy absorbing elements to the transmission line such that current first flows through the diode and then to the one of the energy absorbing elements, and the one of the energy absorbing elements absorbs energy associated with the voltage to limit the voltage to a clamp voltage defined by the one of the energy absorbing elements, and
- a voltage supply configured to establish the threshold and reverse bias the diode.
3 more elements
An oscilloscope comprising:
- an input channel connected, at a first end, to an analog-to-digital converter and connected, at a second end, to a surge protection circuit including a pair of connected energy absorbing elements in parallel with a pair of connected diodes, wherein an anode of one of the energy absorbing elements and a cathode of the other of the energy absorbing elements share a common terminal, and wherein one of the diodes is biased by a corresponding power source such that the diode directs energy to the one of the energy absorbing elements responsive to a voltage of a signal generated by a signal source being greater than a voltage of the corresponding power source and does not direct energy to the one of the energy absorbing element responsive to the voltage of the signal generated by the signal source being less than the voltage of the corresponding power source.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.