Why Waveform Update Rate Matters...
Introduction
Waveform update rate can be extremely important when evaluating oscilloscopes for purchase. Although this specification is often overlooked, it can have a direct impact on your ability to capture a random and infrequent event which occurs just once in a million occurrences of your signal. There are three reasons why fast update rates are important for today’s oscilloscopes:
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Introduction
Waveform update rate can be extremely important when evaluating oscilloscopes for purchase. Although this specification is often overlooked, it can have a direct impact on your ability to capture a random and infrequent event which occurs just once in a million occurrences of your signal. There are three reasons why fast update rates are important for today’s oscilloscopes:
- Scope Performance. If an oscilloscope updates waveforms very slowly, it makes using the oscilloscope very difficult. When you rotate the timebase control, you expect the oscilloscope to respond immediately — not seconds later after the scope has finished processing the data.
- Detailed Display. A fast waveform update rate can improve the oscilloscope’s display quality to show subtle waveform details such as noise and jitter with display intensity modulation.
- Glitch Capture. A fast waveform update rate increases the scope’s probability of capturing random and infrequent events in your signal that may be unreliable. Waveform update rate is an important specification, but the update rate specification itself may be misleading. Even if your oscilloscope’s data sheet specifies a fast update rate, it still may not be able to capture a glitch in your system. Learn how to measure the actual update rate of your scope then compare glitch capture and update rates across oscilloscope brands.
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