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Why should I use High-Speed Digitizers?

National Instruments high-speed digitizers provide:

Faster Setup and Data Transfer Times
Computer-based digitizers have direct connection to high-speed computer buses, which reduces instrument setup and data transfer times. High-speed data transfer reduces your total test time so you can test more products in less time. PCI and PXI/CompactPCI-based digitizers burst data up to 100 times faster than the rate at which GPIB instruments send data to your computer for analysis.

Fast Sampling Rates and High Bandwidth
Choose from a variety of sample rates to meet your test needs, up to 100 MS/s real-time and 2.5 GS/s random interleaved sampling (RIS) with up to 100 MHz analog bandwidth.

Deep Acquisition Memory
Capture key events for longer time intervals using deep memory. Some computer-based digitizers are available with field upgradeable memory options of 4, 16, and 32 MB. With NI digitizers specifically, you can record thousands of waveform acquisitions with a minimum delay between triggers using the "multiple record acquisition" feature. You can also configure these digitizers to capture a waveform and rearm for the next waveform automatically, without software intervention. The NI 5112, in particular, offers double buffering, so you can stream data to computer memory continuously at rates up to 40 MBytes/s without any interruptions.

Multiple-Instrument Synchronization
Computer-based technologies offer you an easy way to synchronize the operation of two or more instruments. With Real Time Synchronization Integration (RTSI) technology and STAR triggering for PXI you can:

  • Synchronize your digitizer to several digitizers to create a 28-channel, 100 MHz oscilloscope in PXI
  • Synchronize your digitizer to an arbitrary waveform generator to accomplish stimulus-response measurements
  • Synchronize your digitizer to switches to test at multiple points
  • Synchronize your digitizer to counter-timer devices to make position-based measurements
  • Synchronize your digitizer to data acquisition boards to accomplish customized measurements

Built-in Time and Frequency Domain Measurements
National Instruments high-speed digitizers come with a powerful instrument driver, NI-SCOPE, which works seamlessly with LabVIEW, Measurement Studio, Microsoft Visual Basic, and Microsoft Visual C++. For interactive measurements, a soft front panel is also provided with every NI digitizer.

With the NI-SCOPE IVI-compliant instrument driver, you have access to more than 50 built-in measurements including waveform math, time and voltage histogram measurements, and frequency measurement tools, such as windows and digital filters. To perform robust frequency domain measurements, NI-SCOPE provides a number of windows for spectral leakage treatment as well as FIR and IIR filters for digital filtering. With the NI 5911 digitizer, which has a dynamic range up to -120 dBfs, you can conduct spectral analysis that is usually associated with expensive FFT spectrum analyzers. Using waveform math operations such as integration and polynomial interpolation, you can extract more information from your acquired waveforms automatically without performing post-processing of the waveforms on your own. Multiacquisition voltage and time histograms are also available for analyzing statistical amplitude and pulse-width jitter. You can make measurements such as edge-to-edge jitter and cycle-to-cycle jitter. With voltage histograms, you can perform statistical pulse-height analysis easily.