I'm worried I've got the wrong scope. I have a 9201 because I need 16 bit dynamic range and fairly high bandwidth (1 GHz would do). Is it possible to get a single shot trace with these specifications? As far as I can tell the 9201 only takes one data point per trigger and so I'd have to be able to trigger it every nanosecond. (I'm pretty sure that the 9201 can't take triggers at this speed!)
The PicoScope 9201 features a ADC with 16 bits of resolution and a bandwidth of 12 GHz. The scope uses sequential sampling rather than real time sampling to capture waveforms. The scope captures the waveform by looking at the repetitive signal several times and builds up the waveform. You can review how the scopes work by following this link: http://www.picotech.com/sampling-oscill ... #question1
If you have any questions about this feel free to ask...
Thanks for the reply Richard. You confirmed what I suspected (and feared!). Is there a picoscope capable of 16 bit resolution on a real time acquisition? If so how fast do they go?
Of hand, I do not know of a company that produces a true real time 1 GS/s 16 bit scope. What is your application exactly, do you truly need those specifications?
We need as high dynamic range as we can get. We're really struggling seeing a signal over the noise at 8bit, so 12 bit would help and 16 bit would make life easier.
The speed is less important. We're probably looking at signals which modulate on the order of nanoseconds. I think we could get away with lower resolution - maybe 250 MHz would be as low as we could go.
Thanks for your interest and any help would be great,