An example of the latter might be the interference caused by placing a microprocessor clock signal too close to your main signal line. Examples include capacitive loads on op-amps that cause peaking, parasitics in trace wiring or cables, thermal noise, thermal distortion, and last but not least, interference from stray H-fields and E-fields that distort your signal. In SCE, gargoyles are those elements lurking in your circuit that can wreak havoc, causing loss in signal quality and unwanted oscillations. It’s in the latter spirit that we use the term gargoyle. Others say the creatures were there to remind the lay people that evil lurks everywhere, and to be wary. Some say these creatures, these gargoyles, were placed to ward off evil spirits. The name gargoyle is historically associated with the decorative water spouts on the sides of early medieval churches that often came in the form of grotesque creatures carved as stone figures. (We do help you model local power isolation for your stages, but not the details of the power bus itself.) Why the name Gargoyle? Not included in the signal chain are all the ancillary bits of circuitry that help support the signal path - things like power supply regulation, protection circuitry, control switches, and the like. Included in this chain are things like a sensor, various filters, gain stages, and an A/D converter (ADC) - the sub-circuits you use to condition your signal for proper digitization. What is a Signal Chain?Ī signal chain is that part of your embedded system that comprises the main path of your signal, from input sensor to output A/D. No laborious net lists or models to concoct as you would have to do in Spice and other simulation tools. We also have a pre-built common interference model database that you can turn on with a click or two. Built-in equation worksheets and data entry GUI elements make it easy to enter and compute parameters. Just a few clicks here and there and boom! There’s your design. More importantly, SCE allows you to do your work quickly as well: Constructing a signal chain is easy. Differential signaling uses a minimum amount of equation solving. grounded as opposed to differential), no iterative equation-solving is needed under the hood. By using canned stages, the program can do its work very quickly and accurately - its internal modeling is fast and efficient and numerically stable and precise. You can mix and match these stages to build any number of varying designs. Instead, we provide a library of pre-built, canned stages, but with enough flexibility to let you model the core of many signal chain designs. SCE is not a general purpose circuit simulator. ![]() ![]() Linear frequency domain analysis is used to model those circuits and associated external interferences, and signal quality is determined in the presence of gargoyles. SCE works by representing a signal chain as a series of sub-circuits called stages. ![]() We call those problems gargoyles and we’ll talk about them in a bit. So what is SCE for? It’s there to help you explore analog signal chains and determine where problems may be lurking in those signal chains. We’ve decided to update the quick tour in the form of a blog post, so that you won’t have to download anything, and we can flesh out the documentation as times goes by. However, as the product has evolved, that document is now a little bit out of date. When the first preview of Signal Chain Explorer (SCE) was released, we included a PDF “quick tour” document with the product, which is also available for download on this site.
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