Test and Measurement Forum

Dear Pico Support & Engineering staff,

I need to average laser radar waveforms to improve SNR.
The PRR (pulse repetition rate) is 5k max.
The record length is 200 microsec per sweep, so at 50Ms/sec, that is 10000 samples.
The oscilloscope model I guess is the 4224/4424.
On the PC, I need to store the result of the averaged 5K sweeps and then save it to disk.

Is this possible?

Sincerely,

MV

Hi

I think the 4000 series scopes should be suitable for this application.

Our software doesn't currently perform averaging of a number of waveforms however.

You want to collect 5000 waveforms per second, each 10000 samples. Is this correct?

Robin

Robin wrote:Hi

The 4000 series scopes would be suitable for this application.

Our software doesn't currently perform averaging of a number of waveforms however.

You want to collect 5000 waveforms per second, each 10000 samples. Is this correct?

Robin

Thanks for your replay Robin:

>>You want to collect 5000 waveforms per second, each 10000 samples. Is >>this correct?

Yes this is correct; In case to perform the average on the PC how long time is needed to transfer the 5k waveforms? (5000x10000x2B=100MB)

Data cannot be transferred via USB at this rate. However, you can use the "rapid block mode" feature of the 4000 series scopes. In this mode, the scope collects a set of waveforms and stores them in its memory. They are then transferred to the PC once collection is complete. However, you are limited to 1000 waveforms.

I have done some tests. See the attached screen shot. This shows 200 microseconds of a 100 kHz sine wave. You can see at the top of the screen it says 1000 of 1000 and you can navigate through the buffer. The properties pane on the right hand side shows the sample rate and the number of samples. The sample rate can be increased by reducing the timebase to 10 us/div, but then you would only have 100 microsecond waveforms.

If 1000 waveforms is acceptable, then the 4000s should be suitable.

Robin