Theoretical and Experimental Studies of Off-the-Shelf V-Dot Probes

This paper introduces the work undertaken to reliably use off-the-shelf differentiating voltage probes attached to coaxial transmission lines. The results obtained prove that indeed such probes are a valid and simple instrument for measuring nanosecond and subnanosecond voltage impulses. As a bonus, this paper also highlighted an important challenging phenomenon that appears whenever an attempt is made to measure fast voltage impulses with a differentiating probe positioned too close to the closing switch of a pulse forming line generator.