This invention relates generally to systems and methods for detecting anomalies and, more particularly, to detecting anomalies in waveforms produced by electrical circuits.
Electronic circuits typically need to be tested in both the design and production phases. At present, there exist several ways to test various portions of such circuits, the most prevalent being through the use of an oscilloscope.
The operation of an oscilloscope provides a time-based snapshot of the operation of a portion of a circuit of interest. For example, an oscilloscope may provide a real-time view of the voltage level in a particular portion of a circuit over a brief (e.g., over one period) time interval. One particular waveform that an oscilloscope may be used to analyze is a clock signal. The oscilloscope will typically show the clock signal (or any other type of signal, such as a data signal) in a Voltage vs. Time (VvT) format.
As described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,263,290 which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety, one particularly effective way to analyze a clock signal is to receive a series of voltages sampled from an input clock signal and interpolate between these samples in order to form a time tag list, using interpolations that are optimized for time interval measurement and analysis. The time tag list accurately represents the times at which particular events of interest occur, and is used to generate displays and results analysis such as adjacent clock cycle jitter and accurate differential triggering and analysis or any other type of data signal related display that may be desired.
One drawback of the testing methods is that the detection of anomalies in the waveforms being analyzed requires highly sophisticated and trained human oscilloscope operators. One additional drawback is that oscilloscopes may require additional software to measure period or frequency over many periods.