Data processing: measuring – calibrating – or testing – Measurement system in a specific environment – Electrical signal parameter measurement system
Reexamination Certificate
2002-05-06
2003-01-14
Assouad, Patrick (Department: 2857)
Data processing: measuring, calibrating, or testing
Measurement system in a specific environment
Electrical signal parameter measurement system
C707S793000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06507796
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to signal measurement systems and, more particularly, to managing a large number of acquired pulses in a signal measurement system.
2. Related Art
Conventional signal measurement systems such as digital oscilloscopes sample, record and display time-varying analog signals. Samples of an input signal are taken and quantified, and the resultant digital representations are stored in an acquisition memory under the control of a sampling clock. The acquired signal data may be subsequently retrieved as locations in memory are read out to provide digital data that can be further processed for output to a display, where an operator may view a waveform representation of the time-varying signal. The sampling clock can be operated at one of several selectable rates depending on the frequency content of the input signal. The portion of the input signal that is acquired; that is, sampled and stored, is determined by appropriate triggering circuitry to enable the operator to capture and display the desired portion of the waveform.
Traditional digital oscilloscopes are typically implemented with acquisition memories sufficient to store perhaps as much as 16,000 to 50,000 signal samples per channel. Typically, an 8-bit analog-to-digital (AID) converter is implemented, resulting in each sample consuming 1 byte of memory, although other conventional systems implement a 16-bit A/D converter. More recent oscilloscopes are often implemented with considerably larger acquisition memories, perhaps on the order of 2-32 Mbytes. Having such deep acquisition memories enables modem digital oscilloscopes to capture long time spans of a signal in a single acquisition. When the acquisition signal consists of al series of pulses, as in common in digital computer and communication systems, this means that many pulses of information are stored in the oscilloscope's memory. For example, digitizing a 1.44 Mb/s T1 communication signal at 100 Msamples/second in a 2 Mbyte deep system can result in as many as 30,000 pulses of information being stored. Managing the display and measurement of such a large number of pulses presents a considerable challenge to the oscilloscope operator. In many cases, the operator's goal is to identify one or more anomalous pulses from the more numerous normal pulses. Typically, the number of anomaly is unknown, so defining a trigger condition for the anomaly is not possible. This means the operator must reply on visual inspection and manually-initiated measurements performed on one pulse at a time. Due to a limited size and resolution of the oscilloscope's display, only a small number of pulses, may be accessed simultaneously at a horizontal scaling sufficient for accurate characterization. Analyzing all the pulses of a given acquisition this way requires the operator to manually advance through the data a few pulses at a time, a prohibitively time-consuming process. As a result, operators of conventional systems are limited to accessing only a small subset of the pulses, generally, in an ad hoc or unstructured maimer. This reduces the likelihood that the operator of a conventional deep memory oscilloscope will successfully identify anomalous pulses efficiently.
Whether or mot anomalous pulses are present in the acquired signal, the operator may wish to determine the statistics of certain measurements across a large number of pulses in the acquisition for the purpose of margins analysis. For example, the duty cycle of a clock waveform may need to be analyzed to insure that the minimum and maximum bounds are not exceeded. Some conventional systems include facilities for determining measurement statistics, however, in such implementations, the statistics are accumulated from measurements performed over multiple acquisitions and/or the results are computed such that a given measurement value is not readily traceable to the pulse it is associated with. Accumulating statistics over multiple acquisitions is disadvantageous because the acquisitions may relate to different operating conditions in the circuit or system being analyzed. Additionally, depending on how many pulses are measured from each acquisition, the time spacing between measured pulses may vary significantly, making stat istical understanding less straightforward. When statistics are computed without traceability to individual pulses, the operator is unable to view the particular pulse associated with the given measurement result. Without a view of the pulse, the operator is at a loss to determine when caused the measurement result. In sum, in currently availabe signal measurement systems, it is difficult for an operator to characterize or troubleshoot a system or circuit through analysis of the large number of pulses that may be captured in a single acquisition.
What is needed, therefore, is a system and method that enables the operator to effectively manage a large number of acquired pulses to achieve a desired analytical or evaluative objective.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is directed to a pulse management system that addresses the above or other drawbacks of conventional systems. The pulse management system is configured to perform a plurality of pulse measurements on each of a plurality of pulses of an acquired signal. The pulse management system is further configured to store results of the pulse measurements in an accessible data structure. Importantly, the pulse management system performs these operations automatically and with substantially no operator involvement.
The consolidation of such pulse measurements has not heretofore been provided by conventional systems. Traditionally, individual pulse measurements have been performed in response to specific actions taken by an operator for a specified pulse displayed on a waveform display. The results of such a single pulse measurement may or may not have been stored beyond that necessary to display the measurement results to the operator. Due to the many thousands of operator actions that would be necessary to invoke a number of traditional pulse measurements on the perhaps thousands of acquired pulses, there has been no attempt heretofore to provide any structure for storing or organizing such measurement data. The pulse management system performs such pulse measurements with minimal operator participation; that is, individual signal pulses need not be displayed and the operator is relieved of the burdensome task of individually applying specific pulse measurements to individual pulses. The present invention also provides a searchable data structure of pulse measurement results for any and if desired, all, acquired pulses, facilitating the implementation of simple and intuitive techniques for searching, sorting and otherwise manipulating the pulse measurements by the operator to gain insights into specific pulses or pulses exhibiting particular behaviors and identify trends or gradual variations of signal behavior and other subtleties that would otherwise be lost in conventional systems. In other Words, an extensive, detailed analysis of system and circuit behavior can now be performed by an operator with little or no involvement in the generation of the necessary pulse measurement data to perform such an analysis.
A number of aspects of the invention are summarized below, along with different embodiments that may be implemented for each of the summarized aspects. It should be understood that the embodiments are not necessarily inclusive or exclusive of each other and may be combined in any manner that is non-conflicting and otherwise possible. It should also be understood that these summarized aspects of the invention are exemplary only and are considered to be non-limiting.
In one aspect of the invention a pulse management system is disclosed. The pulse management system is configured to perform a plurality of pulse measurements on each of a plurality of pulses of an acquired signal. The pulse management system is further configured to store re
Agilent Technologie,s Inc.
Assouad Patrick
LandOfFree
System and method for generating a database of pulse... does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.
If you have personal experience with System and method for generating a database of pulse..., we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and System and method for generating a database of pulse... will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-3016458