Mixing it

By definition, automotive electronic systems are embedded mixed-signal systems because they feature multiple analogue sensors and analogue actuators under digital control. For years, traditional oscilloscopes have been the primary tool-of-choice among automotive electronic system design engineers to measure the quality of both analogue and digital signals. But traditional analogue and digital oscilloscopes have many limitations, including a lack of triggering functions for complex serial events and a limited number of input channels for acquisition. However, a new class of measurement tool called the mixed signal oscilloscope (MSO) has stepped into that breach, presenting its own debugging methodology