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    Application Notes, Technical Literature, and White Papers

    Dec. 1, 2000
    The Internet takes up where the medieval maze builders left off. And, just as you were guaranteed that there was a beginning and an end to a maze, you can be certain the information you want to find is out there somewhere among the billions and billions of web pages. The objective of this list of application notes, technical literature, and white papers is to help you find it.

    Initially, we selected test and measurement sites that offer literature with a broad appeal. In some cases, these documents are the authoritative reference works on particular subjects, for example, notes from Agilent Technologies on RF measurement, or Tektronix notes on oscilloscope probes. We haven’t included many application notes that describe how to use a particular product for a specific measurement.

    Unlike the medieval mazes, however, there are many paths to any particular document, depending on where you start. Figure 1 shows a few of the different kinds of web sites you probably have encountered in your browsing. Although a hierarchy is imposed by the figure, it is by no means a rigid relationship.

    For example, if you were to visit www.chipcenter.com/TestandMeasurement/main.html, you would find abstracts for more than 4,000 application notes from 100 companies. The selection of a note will redirect you to the application note itself on a company site.

    A word of warning if you are attempting to locate information through indirect means: When you are redirected to another site, sometimes the URL will be wrong. Of course, it simply could be wrong. Often, it will have changed because the target site changed through some kind of reorganization. If the material still exists, the best way to find it is to truncate the URL to its minimum and then progress through the site’s page hierarchy.

    University web sites are amazing places to visit. Many areas are freely accessible, although some are restricted to registered students and faculty. UNIX help from The University of Edinburgh, Tomi Engdahl’s Electronics pages at www.ePanorama.net, and a circuits archive from the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington were found as links from wwwbbs.dei.unipd.it/, the website of the University of Padova, Italy. Most other large universities throughout the world have similar types of sites with wide-ranging links.

    The www.ePanorama.net site is overwhelming in the number of topics and links it contains. Lighting is one of the specific subjects, and links from this site go to personal sites having experimental circuit information, company sites with IC application data, and manufacturers’ sites where lighting products are sold.

    Archives generally are unmaintained sites. For instance, the gatekeeper.dec.com/pub/DEC/SRC/technical-notes/ site is an FTP archive on ftp.digital.com. It is an unsupported service of Compaq Corporate Research that you use entirely at your own risk; no warranty is expressed or implied.

    Hundreds of technical/application notes related to computer architecture and software are listed. Unfortunately, all titles are of the form SRC-1999-001.html, for example, and the articles are in a variety of formats. It is worthwhile, recent technical material, but you have to work hard to find the reports you want. It is intended for use by Compaq personnel but freely accessible to others.

    The following short list of URLs directs you to indices of technical material from several larger test and measurement companies. These are the first places to look for information if it’s not presented in the specific documents we have chosen.

    Agilent Technologies
    www.tm.agilent.com/classesProdSearch?md=br&view=
    Applicationnotes&letter=a&language=eng&locale=
    US&qt=&referrer=library

    National Instruments
    digital.ni.com/appnotes.nsf/web/index

    OMEGA Engineering
    www.omega.com/techref/
    This site includes topics such as temperature, pressure, strain and force, flow and level, pH and conductivity/environment, data acquisition, and electric heaters.

    Tektronix
    www.tek.com/Measurement/cgi-bin/framed.pl?
    Document=http://www.tek.com/Measurement/
    App_Notes/indexes/

    LEMUSA
    www.lemusa.com/LEM/LDADocum.nsf/1e76283e9951a
    6f3802567a90059ea38?OpenView&Start=
    1&Count=30&Expand=7#7    .
    Information relating to current measurement is available here.

    Gould Instrument Systems
    www.gouldis.com/applications.htm
    Measurement applications for recorders and DSOs are described.

    LeCroy
    www.lecroy.com
    Application notes, application briefs, and scientific application notes are provided.

    Saving Time

    Although many site types exist, only the company that produces a particular document has a serious interest in assuring that you find it. They’re providing it as a service, but also in the hope that you will use their equipment to make the measurement they have described in great detail. So, the best way to access that information is to go directly to a company site. Of course, you have to know which companies to start with, and that’s where we can help.

    We’ve listed URLs to popular and informative literature found on test and measurement sites. Have we provided links to 99% of the documents that exist? No, not by a long way. But, we have made a start by listing important ones.

    Some of the URLs take you to a list of documents. These URLs include a comment indicating the page in the list that contains the document we have chosen. In other cases, no electronic download is provided, so the URL includes a literature-request comment. The remaining URLs take you directly to a PDF download or a copy of the document presented as a web page. On some sites, you need to select the printable-copy button while on others you simply print the displayed page.

    Buses and Networks

    • RS-232 Troubleshooting
      www.tm.agilent.com/classes/MasterServlet?
      view=applicationnote&apn-ItemID=1000000
      952&language=eng&locale=US
      (literature request)
    • A Guide to Electrical Specification Requirements for Multipair Telephone Cables
      www.dcmindustries.com/applications.htm (literature request)
      Network problems due to impedance mismatch and impedance irregularities in telephone networks are caused to a large extent by extreme tolerances on the primary parameters and unbalances of the circuits in telephone cables, resulting in reflections and standing waves that affect voice frequency and carrier frequency telephone transmission. This paper highlights these irregularities and recommends specific values and tolerances that considerably reduce the impedance mismatch between telephone cables and telephone cables connected to switching, transmitting, and receiving equipment.
    • A White Paper on Universal Serial Bus 
      135.145.1.195/indepth/tutorial/usb/
      usbwhite_frame3.htm
      This white paper discusses the universal serial bus (USB) in both its initial 12-Mb/s form and the newer USB-2 high-speed version. USB has attracted a growing range of USB-compatible data acquisition function modules. Together, USB bus and modules promise to simplify the way people perform data acquisition. The site includes a link to www.usb.org.
    • Benefits of the PCI Bus for Data Acquisition and Imaging
      www.datx.com/images/pdfs/bpci.pdf
      The PCI bus is a board-level expansion standard that features a typical bus bandwidth of 95 MB/s compared to the 5 MB/s of the older ISA technology. A few of the company’s products serve as examples of the performance that can be gained through PCI.
    • Performing Bluetooth RF Measurements Today: AN 1333
      www.tm.agilent.com/classes/MasterServlet?
      view=applicationnote&apn-ItemID=100000
      0518&language=eng&locale=US
      Bluetooth is an open specification for a wireless personal area network providing limited range RF connectivity for voice and data transmissions between information appliances. The Bluetooth technology eliminates the need for interconnecting cables and enables ad hoc networking among devices.

    Communications

    Data Acquisition and Processing

    Disk Drives

    • NLTS—Nonlinear Transition Shift 
      www.lecroy.com/applications/NLTS/default.asp
      During the write process, magnetic fields from magnetization previously recorded onto the disk can interact with the write field from the head, causing a shift in the location of the newly recorded transition. That shift is the nonlinear transition shift or NLTS.

    Element Modeling

    ESD

    • Electrostatic Discharge Application Note
      www.ti.com/sc/docs/psheets/abstract/apps/ssya008.htm
      Proper ESD handling and packaging procedures must be used throughout the processing, handling, and storing of unmounted integrated circuits (ICs) and ICs mounted on circuit boards. This application note discusses how to avoid ESD damage to integrated circuits.

    Fiber Optics

    Logic Analyzers

    • 8 Hints for Solving Common Debugging Problems With Your Logic Analyzer
      www.tm.agilent.com/classes/MasterServlet?
      view=applicationnote&apn-ItemID=10000
      00502&language=eng&locale=US
      This application note helps reduce the complexity of debugging digital systems with a logic analyzer. It includes brief nuggets to help digital design engineers understand how to use logic analyzers most effectively and efficiently.
    • Using Deep Memory to Find the Cause of Elusive Problems
      www.tek.com/Measurement/logic_analyzers/ (choose from list)
      This application note shows how deep memory can be used effectively to debug hardware and embedded software errors. It also discusses how to select a logic analyzer with deep memory based on features such as memory acceleration that affect the speed of operation, increase productivity, and allow you to find the exact data you need.
    • The Importance of Timing Accuracy in a Logic Analyzer 
      www.tek.com/Measurement/logic_analyzers/ (select Application Notes and choose from list)
      This application note demonstrates the need for high-resolution timing by examining three common problems. It looks at how a modern logic analyzer designed with these types of problems in mind can provide the necessary triggering and measurement tools to find and accurately display tough-to-detect timing problems with minimal intrusion on the design under test.

    Optical Inspection and Video

    • MPEG-2: The Basics
      www.tm.agilent.com/classes/MasterServlet?
      view=applicationnote&apn-ItemID=10000
      00648&language=eng&locale=US
      This speaker-note-based tutorial covers the fundamentals of MPEG-2 encoding and multiplexing. It will take you through the encoding process and creation of the elementary stream all the way to how the program-specific information tables are used to reconstruct a TV event from the MPEG-2 transport stream packets.
    • How to Select Components for Image Processing
      135.145.1.195/news/appnotes/imgproc.html
      This tutorial considers design of a PC-based image-processing system including input source and optics, lighting, an X-Y table for DUT positioning, the frame grabber, PC platform, imaging software, and the network connection.

    Oscilloscopes

    Power and Current Measurement

    RF Design and Test

    Strain Gauges

    Software

    • Building Multithreading Applications With LabWindows/CVI: AN 112
      digital.ni.com/appnotes.nsf/b0be082ea115543286
      25648f006a132a/ab84254cedf56d2d8625
      6552007fdadf?OpenDocument
      This application note introduces the concepts of multithreading and multiprocessing and explains how multithreaded systems benefit developers of data acquisition and instrument control applications, including improved throughput, responsiveness, and more efficient background processing. An example developed with LabWindows/CVI 5.0 is discussed in detail to illustrate these benefits in a real-world solution.
    • Visualizing Data in Visual Basic: AN 150
      digital.ni.com/appnotes.nsf/b0be082ea11554
      328625648f006a132a/fb8b45a8fd388e308625
      6832007258f3?OpenDocument
      The ComponentWorks Graph (CWGraph) ActiveX control is a flexible tool that you can use in any ActiveX control container to visualize and interact with 2-D data in the way that is most meaningful to you. This application note describes how to work with the CWGraph control interactively in the ComponentWorks property pages and programmatically using Visual Basic code.
    • Production Test Management Software—Build or Buy? WP 1629 
      digital.ni.com/appnotes.nsf/b0be082ea11554
      328625648f006a132a/bc44b1731ec40b9e86
      2566ac006bcf29?OpenDocument
      This paper outlines some the specific factors involved in defining a test software strategy and reviews the advantages and disadvantages between building your own test executive system and buying a software product to handle these requirements.
    • IEEE98.pdf—Automating Analog Test Design 
      www.intusoft.com/td/ieee98.pdf
      This 10-page tutorial discusses the fundamentals of analog testing including defining failure modes, building a test fault-tree, and test synthesis, definition, and strategy.

    Temperature Measurement

    • Practical Guidelines for Temperature Measurement
      www.omega.com/pdf/temperature/Z/pdf/z013-015.pdf
      This three-page application note covers the operation and use of thermocouples and RTDs.
      • Use of Infrared Imaging to Conduct Defect Analysis of a Printed Circuit Board During Manufacturing or Repair and Test

      This application note discusses the use of infrared imaging technology supplemented with image-analysis software to conduct component defect testing in both a test and repair facility or production-line monitoring.

      Transfer Function Determination

      • Application Note #1: Transfer Function Measurement Configurations
        www.jblpro.com/pages/software jblsmaar.htm#
        Application_Notes
        This application note suggests how to configure a test setup for transfer function and delay locator measurements, including diagrams for typical configurations.

      Transient Measurements

      Published by EE-Evaluation Engineering
      All contents © 2000 Nelson Publishing Inc.
      No reprint, distribution, or reuse in any medium is permitted
      without the express written consent of the publisher.

      December 2000

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