SELECTING YOUR NEXT OSCILLOSCOPE: Why digital triggering matters?
Your oscilloscope trigger determines the precise moment in time your instrument captures critical events of interest. Triggering is often overlooked as a key selection parameter after the instrument is purchased. Oscilloscopes with superior trigger parameters and functionality provide an edge for development teams to quickly and effectively debug and test. A superior triggering system can save significant time trying to isolate difficult-tofind events, allowing engineers to improve designs more quickly.
Engineers are quick to recognize and compare banner specifications such as bandwidth, record length and sample rate. Comparative assessment of the goodness and quality of oscilloscope triggers can be more elusive. Traditional oscilloscope triggering is based on analog circuitry with the signal being split into a data path and a separate trigger path. Newer oscilloscope architectures contain a single path shared by both signal and triggering. This single path approach is known as digital triggering. Digital triggering has numerous advantages over traditional analog trigger architectures.
This document provides:
- An explanation of analog versus digital triggering architectures
- User advantages for oscilloscopes that have digital triggering
- How to determine if an oscilloscope has a digital or analog trigger
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