Acquiring Waveforms
CSA8000B & TDS8000B User Manual 3-27
Acquisition Control Background
This section contains background information on the data sampling and
acquisition process that can help you more effectively setup the acquisition
window of each channel. This section:
Hdescribes the acquisition hardware.
Hdefines the sampling process, sampling modes, and the waveform record.
Hdescribes the acquisition cycle in Normal and FrameScan modes.
Before a signal can be acquired, it must pass through the input channel where it
is sampled and digitized. Each channel has a dedicated sampler and digitizer as
shown in Figure 3--7; each channel can produce a stream of digital data from
which waveform records can be extracted. See Signal Connection and Scaling on
page 3--4 for further description of scaling, positioning, and DC offsetting of
channels.
Digitizer
CH 1
Digitizer
CH 2
CH 3
CH n
Number of channels depends on sampling modules installed
Sampling module
Sampler
Sampler
Digitizer
Digitizer
Sampling module
Sampler
Sampler
Instrument
Instrument
Figure 3- 7: Channel configuration
Acquisition is the process of sampling an analog input signal of an input
channel, converting it into digital data, and assembling it into a waveform
record, which is then stored in acquisition memory. Sampling, then, is the
process that provides one sample per trigger event and, when taken from