Instrumentation & Measurement Magazine 23-8 - 8

The Documentary Standards of the
IEEE Technical Committee 10
Sergio Rapuano, John Jendzurski, Luca De Vito, Steven J. Tilden,
William B. Boyer, and Nicholas G. Paulter, Jr.

lobal trade relies on the ability to reproducibly
and accurately communicate the performance of
products and to support these attestations. This
standardization is essential for accurate, reproducible, reliable, and communicable characterization of the performance
of these devices, to support technology and product advancement, product comparison and performance tracking, and
device calibration and traceability. Standard terms and definitions, reproducible test methods, and accurate computational
procedures are necessary for this communication and facilitate economic growth and technology evolution through the
common understanding of technology. The IEEE Technical
Committee 10 (TC-10), the Waveform Generation, Measurement, and Analysis Committee of the IEEE Instrumentation
and Measurement Society (IMS), fulfills the global need for
standardized terms and test and computational methods for
describing and/or measuring the parameters that describe
the performance of signal generators and waveform recorders and analyzers. The TC-10 has developed and maintains the
following documentary standards: IEEE Std 181-2011, "Standard on Transitions, Pulses, and Related Waveforms" [1];
IEEE Std 1057-2017, "Standard for Digitizing Waveform Recorders" [2]; IEEE Std 1241-2010, "Standard for Terminology
and Test Methods for Analog-to-Digital Converters" [3]; IEEE
Std 1658-2011, "Standard for Terminology and Test Methods
for Digital-to-Analog Converters" [4]; and the IEEE Std 16962013, "Standard for Terminology and Test Methods for Circuit
Probes" [5]. In development is the IEEE Draft Std P2414 "Draft
Standard for Jitter and Phase Noise." The TC-10 comprises
an international group of electronics engineers, mathematicians, professors and physicists with representatives from
national metrology laboratories, national science laboratories,
component manufacturers, the test instrumentation industry,
academia, and end users. The status of the TC-10 standards is
described herein.
The TC-10's progress has been reported periodically at
IEEE and IMEKO conferences [6]-[10]. This paper emphasizes activity since around 2011 through the third quarter
of 2020. The title and scope of each of the TC-10's projects
8

and the current activities of the associated subcommittees
is presented.

TC-10 Documentary Standards
Activities
TC-10 is currently engaged in six projects, one for each of the
documentary standards promulgated by the IEEE TC-10.

IEEE Std 181-2011: "Standard on Transitions,
Pulses, and Related Waveforms" [1] and the
Subcommittee on Pulse Technology (SCOPT)
The IEEE Std 181 defines the parameters that describe the basic characteristics of transitions, pulses, and related signals
and defines the computational procedures for estimating the
value of these parameters. Because of the broad applicability of
electrical pulse technology in the electronics industries (such
as computer, telecommunication, entertainment, and test instrumentation industries), the development of unambiguous
definitions and computation methods for these parameters
is important for communication between manufacturers and
consumers and promotes product comparison and improvement and technology advancement.
The SCOPT published the latest revision to the IEEE Std 181
in January 2011 [1], a discussion of which can be found in [11].
The largest single change to the IEEE Std 181 was the introduction of the shorth method [12] for computing state levels,
where the states are shown as s1 and s2 in Fig. 1. The state level,
level(si), is the value associated with si. The primary method
for computing level(si) has historically been, and still is, the
histogram mode method [13]. The shorth method is more
computationally intensive than the histogram-mode method.
Comparative studies on the performance of the shorth method
and the histogram-mode method for estimating level(si) has
shown that the shorth method typically provides smaller
estimation errors and measurement uncertainties than the histogram-mode method [14], [15]. However, these estimation
errors and measurement uncertainties are typically much less
than the signal noise and, consequently, have minimal influence on the measurement uncertainties of level(si).

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November 2020

Instrumentation & Measurement Magazine 23-8

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