Oscilloscope with certain feature for this task?

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borinsm

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I wonder if someone would know of a scope that has a feature like the Tektronix FilterVu feature on the MSO and DPO 2000 series (variable low pass filter)?

I need to make a specific measurement of a low voltage (using the math channel to show the difference between 2 channels across a current sense resistor), but the voltage is so low that it gets lost in the background noise of the channels.

Someone performed the exact measurement (in an app note for a product test) using the FilterVu feature with a 60KHz low pass filter and it cleaned the signal right up so only the sense resistor waveform was present.

This series of scopes isn't available to me and I don't see the FilterVu feature on the DPO 4000 or 7000 series (which are available to me).

Does anyone know of a scope of any brand that would allow a feature like that low pass filtering to clean up the waveform or else is there another method you'd suggest (I'm not experienced with using current probes and we're trying to measure down to the low microamps level, even 0.6uA) so I am not sure what methods would work other than duplicating the measurement in the original app note using the FilterVu approach.
 
Why not just build a custom current measurement set up?

Do you really need a "floating" (differential) measurement?

If so, what is the common-mode voltage range?

The current range?

The rate of change of the current being measured? (In order to select the filter cutoff frequency).
 
Some background about the measurement being made:
We need to measure the current consumed by just one portion of an IC which has separate VCC pins to power separate parts of the device, so we couldn't just go with sensing from ground level.
The app note had a 10 ohm resistor in line with the VCC pin of interest and used the differential approach on the scope with regular voltage probes and the math channel/filter.
The system runs on 3.3 volts and the current will range from 0.6 uA in sleep mode to maybe 150mA when under full load.
I'm not sure about the rate of change of the current profile (that's part of the measurement we must make so we were going on the fact that the original test used 60 KHz low pass filtering successfully)
 
Ok, so go with an Current sense amplifier like **broken link removed** or similar parts from Analog Devices.. or my personal favorite, a ZXCT1009 (Edit: Upon further thought, the Zetex part may not work right at 3.3V?)

Follow it up with a 2pole to 4 pole active low pass filter (cutoff freq of ~10Hz), or a low pass combined with a 60Hz Notch Filter.

Typical filter:
 

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That's a tough range. I mght suggest a V-I converter for the low currents and a hall effect device for the higher ones. Remeber voltage burden has to be low to get an accurate result. I've sucessfully built I-V converters that worked to 100 mA and were 4 terminal devices. A 2 terminal device with a low voltage burden shouldn't be too hard to do.
 
Mike,

I think he wants to measure the time and current as it comes out of sleep.
 
Yeah I want a current profile over time to characterize the operation of the DUT so I can estimate battery life based on various usage cases of the device.
I was thinking about using this differential voltage probe adapter
https://www.electro-tech-online.com/custompdfs/2011/03/TEK_ADA400A_Spec.pdf

It says it can be accurate down to 5uV which I believe is just slightly lower than my expected voltage drop on a 10 ohm at 0.6uA (6 uV) but I don't so much need accuracy down there, just to be able to detect when I'm in that state without having noise issues from the probes themselves doing their ambient ripple thing. This probe also has a selectable filter too which should help with my 60KHz "FilterVu" needs, but I may not even need that if this probe will naturally amplify the measured signal so I'm not actually trying to scope 5uV and filter it from probe noise but rather I'd be measuring a much higher proportional signal scaled up, but having both is good.

Any thoughts on using this probe for a sense resistor high side measurement?
 
I thought you wanted to get rid of 60Hz artifacts, not 60kHz. That differential preamp should work. Try it at 100Hz cutoff.

When the load draws 150ma, the drop across the 10Ω resistor is 1.5V. Is that acceptable?
 
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The drop is ok for the short peak time at that current, and since the test was originally performed by the silicon vendor, we're just duplicating it anyway so whatever limitations existed are tolerable for us too.
 
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