Electronic – About Oscilloscope Probing Philosophy

oscilloscopeprobe

Recently, I read Tektronix's Probe Bandwidth Calculations. It point out that Tektronix and Agilent have different probing philosophy:

There are two schools of thought on what an oscilloscope probe should
actually display on an oscilloscope. Tektronix subscribes to the
philosophy that a probe should measure the unloaded, or original,
signal. Agilent subscribes to a different philosophy that says a probe
should measure the loaded signal.

Because I've never used Agilent's scope, I want to know if you've noticed this. And what about other scope vendors such as LeCroy, RIGOL, etc, which philosophy they subscribe to.

Best Answer

It would appear that LeCroy follow Agilent/Keysight in this respect (or, at least, Tektronix's presentation of what Agilent's method is). This can be seen from their probe manuals, for example for the ZS4000 active (single-ended) probe. They provide the probe impedance as a function of frequency and advocate that the user corrects for it when interpreting the measurement, using the formula:

$$V_\mathrm{out} = Z_\mathrm{probe}/(Z_\mathrm{probe}+Z_\mathrm{source}) \times V_\mathrm{in}$$

I avoid quoting further from their manual to avoid potential copyright issues (because it would require the whole section to be quoted to reproduce it properly here), but if you follow the link and read the manual, you will find that everything is quite clearly stated.

For the differential probes operating in the 10 GHz range (for example, the WaveLink D1030), their approach is slightly different to either of the ones presented in the Tektronix technical brief. The probes measure the loaded signal, as per Agilent, but they provide equalization software (Virtual Probe) to recover the unloaded signal. One models the circuit impedances and indicates the type and location of the probe, and the de-embedding is done accordingly. They summarize it as follows (quoting from the WaveLink probe manual):

Teledyne LeCroy probes are calibrated at the factory using a Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) to measure a system (probe plus test fixture) frequency response. The test fixture is de-embedded from the measurement using Teledyne LeCroy's Eye Doctor tools so the remaining frequency response is due to the combination of the test signal and the probe loading on the test circuit. The system frequency response is then calculated for these remaining circuit elements.

If you wish to de-embed the effect of probe loading on your circuit, you can use the appropriate equivalent circuit model ... and Teledyne LeCroy's Eye Doctor tools to accomplish this.

You can also use Teledyne LeCroy’s Virtual Probe option. This option allows you to select the probe tip from a list of supported tips. Your selection applies a corresponding s-parameter file that is derived from the equivalent circuit model of the tip.

However, I haven't actually used these probes, so I can't comment on how good the software is.