Making Faster Frequency Measurements with Universal Counters
应用文章
Introduction
Whether you use your universal counter on the bench or in an automated test system, you want to get your data as fast as possible. There are several things you can do to accelerate the process of getting the data you want. Today’s counters help you gain faster insight into your designs and get faster test results on the bench with capabilities such as front-panel display of histograms and trend charts. Increased bus speed improves test system throughput, and built-in features deliver more digits of resolution in less time. Faster frequency and time measurements are important in a diverse set of application areas such as crystal oscillator design and test, ceramic resonator test, data communications system test, and radar verification test. This measurement brief covers some of the techniques you can use to speed up the frequency and time measurements you make with a universal counter.
Snapshot: Testing crystal oscillators
A well-established crystal oscillator manufacturer was looking to expand its product line and wanted to increase test throughput. The manufacturer had many test stations, each containing multiple single-channel counters. By using the Keysight Technologies, Inc. 53230A universal frequency counters/timers with two channels per counter, test engineers were able to more than double their test throughput per test station by performing parallel tests using two channels per counter instead of just a single channel. They made additional throughput improvements by choosing the shortest gate time possible that still gave them the number of digits they wanted and by using appropriate settings for auto-leveling, the front panel display, and data transfer