Again, more bullshit from the math professors.
ALL digital sampling systems only provide you with a presentation of the data that is an approximation of the actual signal. The more data points you have in a given time period, the better that approximation will be. I don't understand why people don't get this.
If you have a digital camera, more pixels is better
When I use a 'scope to look at a signal in the real world (as opposed to the dreamy Utopian academic world), I'm needing to look at the signal because there might be something there that I'm not expecting. If the signal does not look like it's supposed to, then I need to take action to correct the problem, which might be any number of things. Mathematical reconstruction algorithms (and I have used them too) only work well when you know in advance what the signal is supposed to look like. When we are debugging a design, we don't know in advance what the signal will look like, especially if the circuit is misbehaving. So, in this case, it's not a matter of applying a mathematical model to reconstruct the signal from a limited data set. It's a matter of having an overwhelming amount of sample points such that reconstruction of the signal is not necessary other than perhaps a small amount of sin(x)/x smoothing for "nice looking" interpolation between data points. More samples per horizontal division equals a better idea of what's really going on at the probe tip.
So, you are not impressing me with your academic view of a real-world problem, especially when empirically derived data does not match with your theoretical nonsense. And worse yet, you are fooling younger players into believing that their 500MHz 'scope will be able to see a 500MHz signal with astounding detail.
I don't know.... Kids these days ...
You also have to realise that a sine wave must have a significant amount of distortion before it starts looking odd on an oscilloscope. So even though the hardware and the signal reconstruction algorithm may not be perfect chances are these do not result in visual distortions.
When using interleaved ADCs the calibration procedure cancels all the errors so together with a stable design it will produce good repeatable results. Otherwise the DSO would be useless and the whole exersize to build it futile.
This is engineering, you don't just put a better adc because you *feel* you need it, same with the analog front end. Bottom line a 500 mhz scope only means that you'll be able to see a 500 mhz spectral component reasonably well. For starters maybe use FFT on a square wave and see what you're dealing with. For example you need a 100 Thz scope to see why this discussion is going on under this topic Maybe it's a good topic for the next vid in Dave's scope series.
When using interleaved ADCs the calibration procedure cancels all the errors so together with a stable design it will produce good repeatable results. Otherwise the DSO would be useless and the whole exersize to build it futile.So people who try and evaluate the effects of interleave distortion in scopes and write papers about it are just wasting their time because this form of distortion doesn't exist in real scopes because you can just calibrate it away?
It's also interesting that in your world the scope hardware is either error free or it is useless.
The wobble/jitter on the video under discussion may simply be due to less than perfect reconstruction. In general, the signal displayed is not synchronous with the ADC clock. If the trigger is operating correctly, x position on the screen is a function purely of the time from the trigger point. On each successive acquisition, the ADC sample clocks will be at different offsets from the trigger instant because the ADC clock is not synchronous with the displayed signal. Hence on successive sweeps the 'dots' will move, wobble, or jitter with respect to the graticule. This is the correct behaviour. If you select linear interpolation, the straight lines joining these wobbling dots will jump around all over the place, when the signal displayed occupies a large fraction of the Nyquist bandwidth. If you switch to perfect sinx/x interpolation (and the trigger is operating correctly), you should end up with a smooth, stable signal, on which the sample dots (if shown) jump around from acquisition to acquisition, but without changing the shape of the interpolated curve..
This effect is clearly evident when linear interpolation is used: it reduces dramatically, but does not vanish entirely, when sinx/x interpolation is used. This may be because the approximation to sinx/x used by the scope is not very accurate (it has to be an approximation as true sinx/x requires an infinitely long time record); or because a digital trigger interpolator in the scope is using linear interpolation instead of of sinx/x; or because an analog trigger interpolator can select among only a discrete number of interpolation delays. Tektronix invented triggered sweep: I don't think the trigger will be to blame (unless there is an instrument fault, of course). My suspicion is a poor choice of window, or too short a window, on the sinx/x interpolator, probably a limitation of the technology at the time.
Yes, it's difficult to guess what is happening in the video. If I had access to the TDS694C then I'd try a few experiments. I'd make sure that the 3GHz test signal had very low harmonic distortion (add a lowpass filter?) and then feed it to the scope. This would rule out distortion issues with the signal itself.
Presumably the trigger issue could be ruled out if the scope was set to single shot mode. Just take one trace and then do an FFT on the data? If the scope can't do this then maybe dump out the raw data to Excel or Matlab and do an FFT offline.
I'm not a scope guru but my guess is that the FFT may well show what is happening. If the problem is noise related then the FFT would show just noise and the 3GHz signal and low distortion terms. However, if this was a noise+interpolation issue then I think the scope FFT may well show folded back harmonic terms in the display caused by the less than perfect interpolation. So the FFT may show the 3GHz signal but also folded back harmonic distortion terms that appear as alias terms at 1GHz, 2GHz and 4GHz caused by the imperfect interpolation and limited sample rate. These would cause wobble on the signal when viewed when the scope was set back to 'run' mode such that several traces per second are displayed. If the display was a lot faster in terms of displayed waveforms per second, you would probably just see a fatter/graded trace that would smear the wobble making it appear less obvious. But all this is just a guess.
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Several different things could be happening. Timebase jitter could do it (although it would have to be really severe), low-quality interpolation certainly wouldn't help, a missing (or possibly faulty) trigger interpolator could be responsible, inadequate antialias filtering could do it if the HP 8672A had significant harmonic content (which it doesn't), but IMHO the only real problem is a low oversampling margin in a scope that's too old to hide its faults in software.
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Several different things could be happening. Timebase jitter could do it (although it would have to be really severe), low-quality interpolation certainly wouldn't help, a missing (or possibly faulty) trigger interpolator could be responsible, inadequate antialias filtering could do it if the HP 8672A had significant harmonic content (which it doesn't), but IMHO the only real problem is a low oversampling margin in a scope that's too old to hide its faults in software.
...I think G0HZU's idea to examine the FFT is a good approach, but it has to be done with more points and no interpolation getting in the way.
Do you want to do a max points binary capture and post it? I wouldn't mind playing around with it. Could be interesting.
There's only so much it could tell us, unfortunately. Being generated from a real signal, it would have no useful data past Nyquist (5 GHz in this case.) And at 130K points, it would be much too short to reveal the close-in noise pedestal of the sampling clock.
I did try feeding in 7 GHz to see how good the analog antialiasing filter was. I don't remember the exact figure but it was at least 30-40 dB down. Sure wish somebody would leak the schematics for this scope...
So after 5 pages of this did anyone figure out if Keysight are releasing a new 2000/3000 scope in the next few months?
So after 5 pages of this did anyone figure out if Keysight are releasing a new 2000/3000 scope in the next few months?
So after 5 pages of this did anyone figure out if Keysight are releasing a new 2000/3000 scope in the next few months?
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Several different things could be happening. Timebase jitter could do it (although it would have to be really severe), low-quality interpolation certainly wouldn't help, a missing (or possibly faulty) trigger interpolator could be responsible, inadequate antialias filtering could do it if the HP 8672A had significant harmonic content (which it doesn't), but IMHO the only real problem is a low oversampling margin in a scope that's too old to hide its faults in software.
...I think G0HZU's idea to examine the FFT is a good approach, but it has to be done with more points and no interpolation getting in the way.
Do you want to do a max points binary capture and post it? I wouldn't mind playing around with it. Could be interesting.
There's only so much it could tell us, unfortunately. Being generated from a real signal, it would have no useful data past Nyquist (5 GHz in this case.) And at 130K points, it would be much too short to reveal the close-in noise pedestal of the sampling clock.
I did try feeding in 7 GHz to see how good the analog antialiasing filter was. I don't remember the exact figure but it was at least 30-40 dB down. Sure wish somebody would leak the schematics for this scope...
So after 5 pages of this did anyone figure out if Keysight are releasing a new 2000/3000 scope in the next few months?
So after 5 pages of this did anyone figure out if Keysight are releasing a new 2000/3000 scope in the next few months?Well, there is still no industrial competitor for these Keysight scopes from Tektronix or LeCroy.
OK, someone might like WaveSurfer 3000 or Tek MSO2000B.
Keysight has no need to hurry with a new scope model.
So after 5 pages of this did anyone figure out if Keysight are releasing a new 2000/3000 scope in the next few months?Well, there is still no industrial competitor for these Keysight scopes from Tektronix or LeCroy.
OK, someone might like WaveSurfer 3000 or Tek MSO2000B.
Keysight has no need to hurry with a new scope model.