User's Manual

234

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Chapter 5, Advanced Operations

Increasing Measurement Throughput

Measurement throughput is defined as the number of measurements made per unit

of time. When operating the Test Set in the Internal or External Automatic Control

Mode, measurement throughput is influenced by measurement speed,

measurement setup time, and execution speed of the control program. Each of

these factors is, in turn, influenced by several parameters. The following sections

discuss the parameters and their effect on measurement throughput.

Optimizing Measurement Speed

Measurement speed is defined as the time required to complete one measurement

cycle after receipt of a valid trigger event. Measurement speed is influenced by

the following four parameters.

1. Trigger Mode

The Trigger Mode affects the time-to-first-reading and the length of the

measurement cycle and is defined by two parameters: retriggering and settling.

Retriggering refers to what a measurement does once it has completed a

measurement cycle. Settling refers to the amount of delay introduced to allow

signal transients to propagate through the analysis chain and settle out. Refer to

“Triggering Measurements” on page 224 for information on Trigger Mode and its

impact on measurement speed.

2. Autoranging/Autotuning

The autoranging and autotuning functions continuously calculate and adjust gain

and frequency tuning settings to provide the optimum instrument setup for each

measurement. This results in greater measurement accuracy but increases

measurement cycle time. The autoranging and autotuning functions can be turned

off to decrease the measurement cycle time.