Digital storage oscilloscope with automatic time base

Abstract

A digital storage oscilloscope capable of acquiring and displaying input signals over a wide range of frequencies, and automatically establishing, by menu setups or user selection, any of a number of cycles of an input signal for viewing. An input analog electrical signal is sampled at a constant rate and then stored in a fast-acquisition memory. A DSP and a CPU combine to provide an automatic time base which maintains constant width of displayed signals without changing the sampling rate. The time period of one cycle of signal is measured, and the number of digitized samples is reduced or increased by the DSP to provide constant number of samples in order to maintain a constant-width display despite any changes in the input signal frequency. Additionally, the oscilloscope horizontal display axis may be expressed in degrees per division as well as time per division. Thus, an oscilloscope user can select one or more cycles, or portions of cycles, for viewing, and the oscilloscope will automatically establish the desired display.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.