Pattern generator

[Oracle]

Wat's a pattern generator and how it works?

[Simon]

I think you need to explain more. Perhaps the contex ? what sort of pattern ?

[firewalker]

The pattern generator creates a particular pattern signal. E.g. the color bars video signal for testing tv sets.

Alexander.

[robrenz]

It sends different test patterns to old analog TV sets for diagnostic and adjustment purposes.

[rolycat]

It sends different test patterns to old analog TV sets for diagnostic and adjustment purposes.

That's a TV pattern generator, but digital pattern generators are probably more common these days - and cover more application areas than TVs. As Simon mentioned, the OP need to be a bit more specific.

Incidentally, why do people ask this sort of question in the age of Google? Wouldn't it be more productive to spent a bit of time doing some basic research and then come to a forum like this for clarification if necessary?

[Oracle]

something like this:

http://www.home.agilent.com/agilent/product.jspx?cc=IT&lc=ita&ckey=1000004568:epsg:pro&nid=-536902255.536882009.00&id=1000004568:epsg:pro&pselect=SR.GENERAL

I'm just trying to figure out what this thing is used for and what can do or not.
 

[perfect_disturbance]

My general rule is if it costs more than 30k and I don't know what it does I don't need it.

[Oracle]

My general rule is if it costs more than 30k and I don't know what it does I don't need it.

Hehe... LOL, it's just for know...

[free_electron]

This is a machine that can generate a pulsetrain ( repetitive / arbitray / encoded ) at a given clockrate with specified timing parameters ( rise time / fall time / setup time and hold time )
They are used to emulate real signals.

For example : the servo track of a harddisk contains a pilot tone ( 10 periods 50% duty cycle ) followed by a manchester encoded sector number in  a fixed amount of bits. To emulate this you can program this as a pattern

1100110011001100...1100 would give you the pilot followed by 111100111111000011000011 which could be the encoded track number.

To test the performace of the demodulator block in the read channel you can now play with all kinds of parameters: you can drift the clock , inject jitter , create unexpected things ( like 1 missing clock period , or one assemetric clock period ) and study how the circuit behaves.

We typically use AWG's to do this. things like the AWG710B from Sony/tektronix. That can be classified as a Pattern generator

[Oracle]

ok, thanks!