Author Topic: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion  (Read 12410 times)

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Offline Johnny B Good

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Re: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion
« Reply #25 on: October 02, 2020, 10:30:31 pm »
@John

The jitter is not caused by the generator.
You are triggering on a 10.000 000 Mhz sine (CH1) and comparing a 10.000 010 square.
So 10 times a second you got the same phase. Your scope seems to have a screen update rate of about 10/s, but this rate is not perfectly uniform.

It´s simply a stroboscope effect.

I have tried to reproduce it on SDG6052 and SDS2504. The update rate is at 31/s and interestingly without any jitter.
Maybe some of your active measurement functions are introducing the jitter in update rate.

I tried the same with my SDG6000X and got same result. It has no perceptible jitter. It smoothly travels over screen in accordance to frequency difference...
Set to output 9.999994 MHz it measures like this:

(Attachment Link)

So I agree with stroboscopic effect conclusion..

 Tsh, tsk!  :)

 You should know better than to jump to such a conclusion when the more likely (and desirable from your point of view) conclusion will be due to a total absence of this defect in either of your frequency generators which reminds me to check the one in my SDS2104/2504... I'm quite impressed! It's only 1.04Hz down on frequency!  :)

 It drifts slowly up and down within just a tiny fraction of a cycle with no sign of the flicker noise like jitter of a Siglent product, namely my SDG1032X, whose prime purpose is to provide as low a phase noise as practicable (you'd think at least the equal of an FY6600 which has had an smd xo -ectomy in favour of, initially, a cheap 0.1ppm 50MHz TCXO upgrade).

 I guess it's just reflecting the remarkably accurate (for a DSO, that is!) reference oscillator which allows all 7 digits in its hardware frequency counter display to be used with some confidence that only an eighth digit might reveal its feet of clay.  >:D Anyhow, lets use that as the reference and reconnect the SDG1032... and, as expected, the SDG1032 is still jittering.

 My conclusion? You shouldn't need to ask but if you'd like to know my opinion of your tests, I'd have to say that neither of your oscillators is suffering from this SDG1032 defect - there's no need to assume any bogus hypothesising about DSO screen refresh strobing effects on one singular wave trace out of four, the other three of which all show no such jitter symptoms whatsoever.

 TBH, I'm rather surprised and just a little bit disappointed that you even lent any credence to this unproven "Stroboscopic effect" hypothesis.

John
John
 

Online mawyatt

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Re: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion
« Reply #26 on: October 02, 2020, 11:31:37 pm »
Ok John, I think I understand where you are coming from regarding these time/phase/shift calculations. Need to see if I can, as you say "get my head" around this.

Anyway, I don't see any of these "jitter" type effects on the SDS2102X Plus internal AWG, nor the SDG2042X AWG.

Best,
Curiosity killed the cat, also depleted my wallet!
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Offline Johnny B Good

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Re: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion
« Reply #27 on: October 03, 2020, 01:10:43 am »
Ok John, I think I understand where you are coming from regarding these time/phase/shift calculations. Need to see if I can, as you say "get my head" around this.

Anyway, I don't see any of these "jitter" type effects on the SDS2102X Plus internal AWG, nor the SDG2042X AWG.

Best,

 Thanks for that. Assuming you were displaying both signals together, matched as closely in frequency to each other to reduce, if not eliminate, any drift and you weren't able to observe the jumpiness (jitter at low frequency flicker noise rate) that I'm still currently observing with my own SDG1032X, I think we can safely conclude that neither of your signal sources suffer from this defect.

 However, I've not heard from anyone who has run this test with an actual SDG1032 or SDG1062, which still leaves me in the dark as to whether this is just an unfortunate fault that happens to afflict the particular example that was shipped out to me or whether it's something peculiar to this particular model which, btw, was supplied with the latest software (Firmware, surely?) update (V1.01.01.33R1B6) with hardware version 02-01-00-24-00.

 I'd still like to hear from any SDG1032/SDG1062 owners who have tried this test which requires the use of another independent frequency generator to reveal this particularly nasty form of jitter that originates from the internal clock oscillator. Locking it to an external 10MHz reference (GPSDO or Rubidium oscillator or even just a well calibrated double ovened XO) completely eliminates this clock jitter. If you're in the habit of keeping it locked to an external 10MHz frequency standard, you'll have to switch it back to its internal clock in order to perform this particular test.

John
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Online mawyatt

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Re: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion
« Reply #28 on: October 03, 2020, 02:40:26 am »
Since this low frequency jitter is eliminated when locked to an external signal, I would suspect the SDG1032X crystal oscillator as the jitter source and likely just a bad (noisy) component rather than a bad design.

Best,
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Offline Johnny B Good

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Re: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion
« Reply #29 on: October 03, 2020, 04:04:07 am »
Since this low frequency jitter is eliminated when locked to an external signal, I would suspect the SDG1032X crystal oscillator as the jitter source and likely just a bad (noisy) component rather than a bad design.

Best,

 You're probably right with your suspicion. I believe this is a consequence of using a dirt cheap commodity smd XO chip by Siglent instead of a better quality TCXO more in keeping with a higher priced upmarket offering than those cheap Chinese toy AWGs offered by Feeltech and friends.

 In retrospect, the similar jitteryness I'd seen when testing against a bunch of salvaged DIP14 XOs before I'd upgraded the crappy 50ppm 50MHz smd XO chip used in the FY6600 which I'd assumed had originated in the DIP14 XOs, now looks to have been an issue with the FY6600's smd XO chip, hence my bemusement at Siglent for stooping so low as to use such a cheap junk smd XO in such a pricey product.

 Perhaps they used a cheap smd XO simply because most would be free of this issue and "Good Enough" in view of the option to use an external clock reference and any that weren't. were likely to go unnoticed for quite some time (a cursory examination with a DSO would simply fail to reveal this particularly nasty form of clock jitter).

 Anyway, it looks like I'll have to return this to Telonic Instruments Ltd as "Unfit for purpose" for a refund even though it looks like I'll have to stump up for the return carriage costs. I now have less than a week in which to take this action before I'm stuck with a function generator that doesn't compare against my much modded FY6600-60M quite as well as I'd hoped it would.

 TBH, I'm very disappointed with this particular Siglent product. Their DSOs are a much more refined offering. The SDS1202X-E I'd purchased almost two years ago for just a fiver more than the SDG1032X's asking price at that time was a much better value proposition that still leaves me impressed by its performance and quality.

 I had considered negotiating an exchange for the SDG2042X on a deliver and collect basis to save me the return shipping costs but since both share the same UI which, imo, needs some serious debugging to put right, will leave me with an even greater sense of dissatisfaction than I'm feeling right now, I think the best option is simply return it for a full refund and accept the cost of return postage. At least that way, I am free to reconsider all of my options which, despite my reservations, could even include an FY6900 from Feeltech. ::)

 I've just started a search to confirm the existence of a 100MHz model which has just been interrupted by a PM from a fellow EEVBlog member asking me whether I'd still recommend any of the Feeltech AWGs. In view of my recent experience with what was supposed to be an upmarket AWG, I think I can safely recommend the FY6900 as a product that won't disappoint at its price point (it just requires some remedial work to remove Feeltech's gross act of grounding vandalism plus a small fan to make it usable and acceptably reliable).  >:D

John
« Last Edit: October 03, 2020, 01:30:55 pm by Johnny B Good »
John
 

Offline 2N3055

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Re: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion
« Reply #30 on: October 03, 2020, 08:17:17 am »
@John

The jitter is not caused by the generator.
You are triggering on a 10.000 000 Mhz sine (CH1) and comparing a 10.000 010 square.
So 10 times a second you got the same phase. Your scope seems to have a screen update rate of about 10/s, but this rate is not perfectly uniform.

It´s simply a stroboscope effect.

I have tried to reproduce it on SDG6052 and SDS2504. The update rate is at 31/s and interestingly without any jitter.
Maybe some of your active measurement functions are introducing the jitter in update rate.

I tried the same with my SDG6000X and got same result. It has no perceptible jitter. It smoothly travels over screen in accordance to frequency difference...
Set to output 9.999994 MHz it measures like this:

(Attachment Link)

So I agree with stroboscopic effect conclusion..

 Tsh, tsk!  :)

 You should know better than to jump to such a conclusion when the more likely (and desirable from your point of view) conclusion will be due to a total absence of this defect in either of your frequency generators which reminds me to check the one in my SDS2104/2504... I'm quite impressed! It's only 1.04Hz down on frequency!  :)

 It drifts slowly up and down within just a tiny fraction of a cycle with no sign of the flicker noise like jitter of a Siglent product, namely my SDG1032X, whose prime purpose is to provide as low a phase noise as practicable (you'd think at least the equal of an FY6600 which has had an smd xo -ectomy in favour of, initially, a cheap 0.1ppm 50MHz TCXO upgrade).

 I guess it's just reflecting the remarkably accurate (for a DSO, that is!) reference oscillator which allows all 7 digits in its hardware frequency counter display to be used with some confidence that only an eighth digit might reveal its feet of clay.  >:D Anyhow, lets use that as the reference and reconnect the SDG1032... and, as expected, the SDG1032 is still jittering.

 My conclusion? You shouldn't need to ask but if you'd like to know my opinion of your tests, I'd have to say that neither of your oscillators is suffering from this SDG1032 defect - there's no need to assume any bogus hypothesising about DSO screen refresh strobing effects on one singular wave trace out of four, the other three of which all show no such jitter symptoms whatsoever.

 TBH, I'm rather surprised and just a little bit disappointed that you even lent any credence to this unproven "Stroboscopic effect" hypothesis.

John

OK I'll byte...
Let's run with your hypothesis.
So what is your estimate for this jitter?  P-P and RMS ?

If you trigger on signal coming out of SDG1032X, delay from trigger 1ms, enable persistence, do you see smearing?
The way it looks on your screen, you should.

As for "stroboscopic" effect it might be unfortunate name. What you are doing is actually stroboscopy in a way, looking at the difference between signals.
Problem is that many digital scopes don't acquire data in regular intervals. They are actually capturing bursts, than pause and display and on. There is lot of jitter in that process.
It is not like with analog scopes where you have retrigger time and that's it, which guarantees uniform time between sweeps.
It is quite easy to get exactly the effect you see because of that. A jitter in display. And it is related with frequency difference, so sometimes you see it or don't....

And yes what I wrote is a hypothesis, not a proven fact. I don't have SDG1032X here to try, so I cannot claim anything.
You should not hang on to every word. You seem to be very eloquent in expressing yourself, and a stickler for every word said.
Don't do that. Many of us are not born English speakers, and nuances of languages are not something we do..  I know you just want to be very accurate, but it doesn't work that way...

Best regards,
Siniša
 

Online mawyatt

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Re: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion
« Reply #31 on: October 03, 2020, 02:00:20 pm »
Since this low frequency jitter is eliminated when locked to an external signal, I would suspect the SDG1032X crystal oscillator as the jitter source and likely just a bad (noisy) component rather than a bad design.

Best,

 You're probably right with your suspicion. I believe this is a consequence of using a dirt cheap commodity smd XO chip by Siglent instead of a better quality TCXO more in keeping with a higher priced upmarket offering than those cheap Chinese toy AWGs offered by Feeltech and friends.

 In retrospect, the similar jitteryness I'd seen when testing against a bunch of salvaged DIP14 XOs before I'd upgraded the crappy 50ppm 50MHz smd XO chip used in the FY6600 which I'd assumed had originated in the DIP14 XOs, now looks to have been an issue with the FY6600's smd XO chip, hence my bemusement at Siglent for stooping so low as to use such a cheap junk smd XO in such a pricey product.

 Perhaps they used a cheap smd XO simply because most would be free of this issue and "Good Enough" in view of the option to use an external clock reference and any that weren't. were likely to go unnoticed for quite some time (a cursory examination with a DSO would simply fail to reveal this particularly nasty form of clock jitter).

John

From what I've seen from the Siglent gear I have, and my unfortunate (long story) detailed venture into the innards of the SDS2102X Plus (also quick look into the SSA 3021X Plus), and the many teardowns of Siglent gear by Dave, I don't think they use cheap components, including these XO devices. The fact that they use the same components for many of these devices that can be software "upgraded" to higher performance levels basically means that the high performance components are utilized in the baseline products, the hardware is capable of the upper performance levels without change, so uses the higher performance components.

I don't think jitter is a parameter that is verified and tested when the AWG was built, and thus likely to "slip" thru QA. I'd wager that the XO is your specific AWG is defective and noisy, which is easily verified if you got a replacement AWG and compared side by side before returning the defective one. If that was true then I would think you shouldn't have to pay for return postage, since you've verified you were originally shipped a defective AWG, worth a try with Telonic  ::)

I personally have no serious complaints with the SDG2042X AWG, either performance or UI. I've even considered building a boost amplifier for it to get to 200Vpp levels and another for high current (+-3A).

Good luck,

Best,
Curiosity killed the cat, also depleted my wallet!
~Wyatt Labs by Mike~
 
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Offline 2N3055

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Re: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion
« Reply #32 on: October 03, 2020, 03:40:25 pm »
In attachment a short video that shows display jitter on a scope from a stable signal (SDG6000X) triggered from 10 MHz out from my Sighound SA (not very accurate, but jitter free, stable source).
Scope is Micsig STO1104C.
This same combination of sources creates perfectly smooth display on Keysight 3104T.... Also, changing settings of generator, creates nice display on Micsig too...

That is why I said that it can be scope capture/display interaction with signal frequencies artefacts..

P.S. File is MP4, remove .ZIP extension from the end.
 
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Online mawyatt

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Re: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion
« Reply #33 on: October 03, 2020, 05:06:22 pm »
That's a very interesting video!! Almost looks like the scope is having an issue triggering rather than jitter on the signal. You could reverse the roll of the signal and trigger source to see what happens.

My thinking is if the edge jitter is due to the internal AWG clock, then having the trigger frequency and signal frequency equal shouldn't matter, as long as the are integer multiples, and neither which is the trigger and which is the input. The AWG signal used as a trigger at say 1MHz should show jitter relative to a stable reference like the 10MHz source used as an input, and vice versa. I just tried this with one AWG (scope) at 10MHz and the other at 1MHz which was adjusted (few mHz) to get the waveforms to remain somewhat stationary (slow random walk). Triggering off either makes no difference, and changing the frequency around makes no difference, and changing the waveform from Sine to Squarewave makes no difference. The scope waveforms show no hint of any kind of jitter.

I wondered if the AWG in the scope might be different since the scope and AWG might share the same XO which may have some type of synch effect. So I used the best source I have available, the 10MHz Ref Output from my SSA3021X Plus. The results were the same, so hint of any jitter.


Best,
Curiosity killed the cat, also depleted my wallet!
~Wyatt Labs by Mike~
 
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Offline 2N3055

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Re: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion
« Reply #34 on: October 03, 2020, 05:56:39 pm »
Mawyat,

I'm not saying Johnny is wrong, or that his SDG1000X doesn't have jitter.
But what I'm saying, is that if does have such a horrible jitter, it would be plainly visible just connecting output to a scope, and put some trigger delay. It should be plainly visible, and some persistence would show P-P jitter. No need to trigger from some other source and do phase drift comparison ...
And as I shown in the video from Micsig, you can create all kind of funny things on scope display, just by hitting sweet spot with scope own triggering frequency/pattern and interaction with signals. I couldn't create similar thing with Keysight 3000T, because it's trigger pattern is more similar to analog scope and faster....
All the best,

Siniša
 

Online mawyatt

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Re: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion
« Reply #35 on: October 03, 2020, 07:58:43 pm »
I wasn't inferring that you or Johnny is wrong or right, just trying some simple experiments with what I have readily available and reporting what I've seen.

Agree, the simplest test is just use the scope delay and persistence to see if you have any significant cycle to cycle, or over multiple cycle jitter from the AWG. This won't show low frequency jitter tho, unless you can create a very long delay.

Best,
Curiosity killed the cat, also depleted my wallet!
~Wyatt Labs by Mike~
 

Offline 2N3055

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Re: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion
« Reply #36 on: October 03, 2020, 08:44:41 pm »
I wasn't inferring that you or Johnny is wrong or right, just trying some simple experiments with what I have readily available and reporting what I've seen.

Agree, the simplest test is just use the scope delay and persistence to see if you have any significant cycle to cycle, or over multiple cycle jitter from the AWG. This won't show low frequency jitter tho, unless you can create a very long delay.

Best,

Hi,
If you enable infinite persistence and wait long enough it will show all jitter components (unless jitter is some kind of deterministic modulation and you sample synchronous to modulation). Since your trigger is not related to jitter, it will, after some time,  sample most of  possible periods combination and it will show the smearing. You can delay for one signal period only, it wouldn't matter.

Delaying helps to see it, if you have jitter that accumulates over time in one direction, so you can see added contraction of time intervals of signal period over, say, 100 periods. You would see that with deterministic, periodic jitter. Basically FM modulation. With stochastic jitter, if you delay enough, shifts left and right will average over time, so if you delay too much, you might see less, not more...

What I'm saying, is that when you see something that looks odd, you need to verify it in several ways, to confirm it's really there or you might be measuring artefact of measurement itself. Good way to do it is to measure with several different instruments and methods. When they start to agree, you're on a good path...

Regards,
 

Offline TurboTom

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Re: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion
« Reply #37 on: October 03, 2020, 09:21:25 pm »
Get yourself an MDA (HP 53310A) and be happy!  8)

There's probably no better tool (toy??) for a (soon-to-be) time-nut. It won't take long until you need to own a GPSDO, Rb or even Cs time base...  >:D  I can tell from my own experience. There's no way of getting out of this -- join TEA ;)
 
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Online mawyatt

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Re: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion
« Reply #38 on: October 03, 2020, 10:54:03 pm »

Hi,
If you enable infinite persistence and wait long enough it will show all jitter components (unless jitter is some kind of deterministic modulation and you sample synchronous to modulation). Since your trigger is not related to jitter, it will, after some time,  sample most of  possible periods combination and it will show the smearing. You can delay for one signal period only, it wouldn't matter.

Delaying helps to see it, if you have jitter that accumulates over time in one direction, so you can see added contraction of time intervals of signal period over, say, 100 periods. You would see that with deterministic, periodic jitter. Basically FM modulation. With stochastic jitter, if you delay enough, shifts left and right will average over time, so if you delay too much, you might see less, not more...

What I'm saying, is that when you see something that looks odd, you need to verify it in several ways, to confirm it's really there or you might be measuring artefact of measurement itself. Good way to do it is to measure with several different instruments and methods. When they start to agree, you're on a good path...

Regards,

I took a few measurements of the SDG2042X AWG at 10MHz with infinite persistence & a trigger delay of 1us (10 cycles, PNG76), 10us (100 cycles, PNG75) and 1ms (10,000 cycles, PNG74). All 3 look the same, no hint of any jitter :-+

Another way to look for jitter is with a SA in the way of excessive Phase Noise, did so with 100Hz span and 1Hz resolution BW (PNG4). Then looked at the SDG2042X Reference Output (PNG5), then the SSA3021X Plus Reference Output (PNG6) for comparisons.

Best

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Offline 2N3055

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Re: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion
« Reply #39 on: October 03, 2020, 11:18:56 pm »
Get yourself an MDA (HP 53310A) and be happy!  8)

There's probably no better tool (toy??) for a (soon-to-be) time-nut. It won't take long until you need to own a GPSDO, Rb or even Cs time base...  >:D  I can tell from my own experience. There's no way of getting out of this -- join TEA ;)

I try to stay away as much as I can... Don't tempt me...  :-DD
 

Online mawyatt

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Re: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion
« Reply #40 on: October 03, 2020, 11:32:11 pm »
Get yourself an MDA (HP 53310A) and be happy!  8)

There's probably no better tool (toy??) for a (soon-to-be) time-nut. It won't take long until you need to own a GPSDO, Rb or even Cs time base...  >:D  I can tell from my own experience. There's no way of getting out of this -- join TEA ;)

Don't have that tool, but the SSA3021X Plus when fully "upgraded" has a Modulation Analyzer which has FM capability :)

I've never used this but decided to give it a go using the SDG2042X AWG output at 10MHz, then the AWG 10MHz reference, then the SSA3021X Plus 10MHz reference. The AWG outputs showed a FM deviation of 0.06Hz with SNR of 14.5dB, while the AWG reference showed a deviation of 0.06Hz with SNR of 18dB and the SSA was 0.03Hz with SNR of 66dB. This agrees with the SA plots regarding the lower Phase Noise of the SSA reference which is to be expected, it's also measuring itself.

Best,
 
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Offline TurboTom

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Re: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion
« Reply #41 on: October 04, 2020, 12:01:28 am »
This appears to be quite a nice measurement function of the SSA3000X-Plus. But measuring of the device's own reference won't tell you much about the quality of the reference itself (I assume that you've "only" used one SSA for the test...  ;)) but rather about the characteristics of the PLL circuitry inside the SSA that generates all the local frequencies required to analyze the input signal.

You are right at the verge of "time nuttery", always in need of that slightly better reference to be able to characterize all the others...I know what I'm talking about  >:D

Cheers,
Thomas
 

Offline Johnny B Good

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Re: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion
« Reply #42 on: October 04, 2020, 12:18:25 am »
@John

The jitter is not caused by the generator.
You are triggering on a 10.000 000 Mhz sine (CH1) and comparing a 10.000 010 square.
So 10 times a second you got the same phase. Your scope seems to have a screen update rate of about 10/s, but this rate is not perfectly uniform.

It´s simply a stroboscope effect.

I have tried to reproduce it on SDG6052 and SDS2504. The update rate is at 31/s and interestingly without any jitter.
Maybe some of your active measurement functions are introducing the jitter in update rate.

I tried the same with my SDG6000X and got same result. It has no perceptible jitter. It smoothly travels over screen in accordance to frequency difference...
Set to output 9.999994 MHz it measures like this:

(Attachment Link)

So I agree with stroboscopic effect conclusion..

 Tsh, tsk!  :)

 You should know better than to jump to such a conclusion when the more likely (and desirable from your point of view) conclusion will be due to a total absence of this defect in either of your frequency generators which reminds me to check the one in my SDS2104/2504... I'm quite impressed! It's only 1.04Hz down on frequency!  :)

 It drifts slowly up and down within just a tiny fraction of a cycle with no sign of the flicker noise like jitter of a Siglent product, namely my SDG1032X, whose prime purpose is to provide as low a phase noise as practicable (you'd think at least the equal of an FY6600 which has had an smd xo -ectomy in favour of, initially, a cheap 0.1ppm 50MHz TCXO upgrade).

 I guess it's just reflecting the remarkably accurate (for a DSO, that is!) reference oscillator which allows all 7 digits in its hardware frequency counter display to be used with some confidence that only an eighth digit might reveal its feet of clay.  >:D Anyhow, lets use that as the reference and reconnect the SDG1032... and, as expected, the SDG1032 is still jittering.

 My conclusion? You shouldn't need to ask but if you'd like to know my opinion of your tests, I'd have to say that neither of your oscillators is suffering from this SDG1032 defect - there's no need to assume any bogus hypothesising about DSO screen refresh strobing effects on one singular wave trace out of four, the other three of which all show no such jitter symptoms whatsoever.

 TBH, I'm rather surprised and just a little bit disappointed that you even lent any credence to this unproven "Stroboscopic effect" hypothesis.

John

OK I'll byte...
Let's run with your hypothesis.
So what is your estimate for this jitter?  P-P and RMS ?

If you trigger on signal coming out of SDG1032X, delay from trigger 1ms, enable persistence, do you see smearing?
The way it looks on your screen, you should.

As for "stroboscopic" effect it might be unfortunate name. What you are doing is actually stroboscopy in a way, looking at the difference between signals.
Problem is that many digital scopes don't acquire data in regular intervals. They are actually capturing bursts, than pause and display and on. There is lot of jitter in that process.
It is not like with analog scopes where you have retrigger time and that's it, which guarantees uniform time between sweeps.
It is quite easy to get exactly the effect you see because of that. A jitter in display. And it is related with frequency difference, so sometimes you see it or don't....

And yes what I wrote is a hypothesis, not a proven fact. I don't have SDG1032X here to try, so I cannot claim anything.
You should not hang on to every word. You seem to be very eloquent in expressing yourself, and a stickler for every word said.
Don't do that. Many of us are not born English speakers, and nuances of languages are not something we do..  I know you just want to be very accurate, but it doesn't work that way...

Best regards,
Siniša

 Ok, it's my turn to "bite" :)

 The only way I can delay from the trigger point by 1ms is to use the zoom function and even this is insufficient to demonstrate this low frequency jitter. However, after a lot of knob twiddling, I managed to configure a timebase setting of 50ms/div (500ms per unzoomed scan) and build up a delay of 50ms from which point I could zoom down to a 10ns/div allowing me to examine a single cycle of the 10MHz square wave from the SDG1032 50ms after the trigger point. I used a 10 seconds persistence to reveal a level of jitter peaking at around 15 to 20ns pk-pk. This method of looking for such jitter is what I'd categorise as "Doing it the hard way."

 Obviously with a refresh rate of just 4 per second, I won't be seeing the full picture revealed by triggering from another 10MHz signal syntonised to the SDG1032's signal at the normal  unzoomed 10ns/div timebase setting (aka, "Doing it the easy way").

 I've attached a couple of photos showing the above results. I wanted to use a long exposure time to help enhance the 10 seconds persistence effect (the traces are rather thin and dim) and it took me a while to figure out how to adjust ISO, aperture and shutter speed selections in the manual mode but, after turning off extraneous light sources (my desktop PC monitor for one), I landed up with a 4 second and an 8 second exposure shot (tripod mounted and two second shutter delay to remove camera shake from pressing the shutter button).

 The 8 second exposure is the "money shot" but leaves the timebase settings over exposed, hence the 4 second exposure (which in hindsight, should have been a 1 or 2 second exposure to best reveal the settings).

 Of course, when you're using such a low frequency timebase in fine detail like this (a 100ns segment some 50ms after the trigger event) the question about jitter in the 'scope's timebase does enter one's mind but since I already had two independent low jitter 10MHz reference sources (the RFS and the 10MHz Sine wave phase locked to a 10MHz GPSDO) connected to the 'scope, I was able to trigger from either of those in turn and check a 100ns segment 50ms after the trigger event to examine what jitter, if any, there was on these signals by way of comparison.

 I'm happy to report that whilst there was some tiny hint of jitter, it did seem to all originate with the timebase rather than from the signals themselves. IOW, the jitter seen on the SDG1032's 10MHz sine wave using this technique was essentially all AWG with virtually no contribution from the SDS2504X Plus timebase.

 TBH, I think I'm seeing the evil jitter effect exhibited by that class of XO known as a DDS XO where singular frequency quartz blanks, produced by the million to cut costs, drives a DDS synthesiser, laser programmed to select the output frequency requested by the final customer.

 Not every application requires a low jitter clock source, especially those applications in cheap digital toys where such jitter is absolutely demanded to provide a built in "spread spectrum" EMC mitigation function to reduce interference on spot frequencies below the thresholds used in EMC compliance labs.

 Curious about just what sort of jitter one might expect from a 'modern day' dds based smd xo, I did a bit of research and landed up looking at a Silicon Labs datasheet here:

https://www.silabs.com/documents/public/data-sheets/si510-11.pdf

Assuming Siglent would not be regarding the one dollar fifty cent cost per unit in thousand off quantities as excessive and be looking towards an even cheaper source (but, who knows what nasty cost cutting tricks their friggin' bean counters might be getting up to?), I could simply be looking at the effect of a faulty 'modern smd XO' rather than a systemic issue with the SDG1000X model range. :-//

 BTW, I don't disagree with the point you made regarding the fact that oscilloscopes are simply another form of stroboscopy. What I was disagreeing with was the hypothesis that this effect, common to all four channels, should pick out just the one that happened to be displaying the AWG's output, regardless of which channel was used,  leaving the other three to be displayed unmolested by any such a strobing effect.

 I know some DSOs (possibly even some specialised CROs) have the feature of displaying channels with independently triggered time bases but this model, afaiaa, offers no such feature (and I know I certainly haven't accidentally selected such a timebase/triggering mode).
 
 Anyhow, since I'm running out of time to effect a return with full refund on the basis of it not being fit for purpose, that's all rather academic now. There's quite clearly an LF flicker frequency like jitter effect going on which is afflicting the generator's output waveforms since it can be detected using both the hard and the easy ways to lift this particular rock to reveal this otherwise hidden gremlin.

 It's time I composed an email of complaint, with video attachment (or a link to one of these EEVBlog postings into SDG1000X related topic threads (two others besides this one) if their email client rejects such  or any attachments). Or, I might just start a new topic thread dedicated to this specific issue rather than direct them to here or any of the other two topic threads if their email client software does reject attachments. >:D

John

John
 

Online mawyatt

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Re: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion
« Reply #43 on: October 04, 2020, 12:39:29 am »
This appears to be quite a nice measurement function of the SSA3000X-Plus. But measuring of the device's own reference won't tell you much about the quality of the reference itself (I assume that you've "only" used one SSA for the test...  ;)) but rather about the characteristics of the PLL circuitry inside the SSA that generates all the local frequencies required to analyze the input signal.

You are right at the verge of "time nuttery", always in need of that slightly better reference to be able to characterize all the others...I know what I'm talking about  >:D

Cheers,
Thomas

I've already fallen to the Volt-Nut, having built some References based on the LM399 & LTZ1000 for use with my HP34401A, Agilent 34401A and recent Keysight 34465A :). So suspect you are correct about the Time-Nut now ::)

Best,

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Re: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion
« Reply #44 on: October 04, 2020, 01:25:51 am »

It's time I composed an email of complaint, with video attachment (or a link to one of these EEVBlog postings into SDG1000X related topic threads (two others besides this one) if their email client rejects such  or any attachments). Or, I might just start a new topic thread dedicated to this specific issue rather than direct them to here or any of the other two topic threads if their email client software does reject attachments. >:D

John

Agree, that is a horrible result. Just did the same "Zoom" test at 50ms zoomed in to 10ns/div with every 10MHz source I have, and all are showing no signs of jitter, even the DSO AWG. Even used the waveform Combine Function in the SDG2042X to sum the 2Vpp 10MHz signal with a 50mv noise signal to try and duplicate your result. Surely this is a defective XO in your AWG.

Best,

 
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Offline rf-loop

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Re: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion
« Reply #45 on: October 04, 2020, 06:28:53 am »
@John

The jitter is not caused by the generator.
You are triggering on a 10.000 000 Mhz sine (CH1) and comparing a 10.000 010 square.
So 10 times a second you got the same phase. Your scope seems to have a screen update rate of about 10/s, but this rate is not perfectly uniform.

It´s simply a stroboscope effect.

I have tried to reproduce it on SDG6052 and SDS2504. The update rate is at 31/s and interestingly without any jitter.
Maybe some of your active measurement functions are introducing the jitter in update rate.


I tried the same with my SDG6000X and got same result. It has no perceptible jitter. It smoothly travels over screen in accordance to frequency difference...
Set to output 9.999994 MHz it measures like this:

(Attachment Link)

So I agree with stroboscopic effect conclusion..


 Tsh, tsk!  :)

 You should know better than to jump to such a conclusion when the more likely (and desirable from your point of view) conclusion will be due to a total absence of this defect in either of your frequency generators which reminds me to check the one in my SDS2104/2504... I'm quite impressed! It's only 1.04Hz down on frequency!  :)

 It drifts slowly up and down within just a tiny fraction of a cycle with no sign of the flicker noise like jitter of a Siglent product, namely my SDG1032X, whose prime purpose is to provide as low a phase noise as practicable (you'd think at least the equal of an FY6600 which has had an smd xo -ectomy in favour of, initially, a cheap 0.1ppm 50MHz TCXO upgrade).

 I guess it's just reflecting the remarkably accurate (for a DSO, that is!) reference oscillator which allows all 7 digits in its hardware frequency counter display to be used with some confidence that only an eighth digit might reveal its feet of clay.  >:D Anyhow, lets use that as the reference and reconnect the SDG1032... and, as expected, the SDG1032 is still jittering.

 My conclusion? You shouldn't need to ask but if you'd like to know my opinion of your tests, I'd have to say that neither of your oscillators is suffering from this SDG1032 defect - there's no need to assume any bogus hypothesising about DSO screen refresh strobing effects on one singular wave trace out of four, the other three of which all show no such jitter symptoms whatsoever.

 TBH, I'm rather surprised and just a little bit disappointed that you even lent any credence to this unproven "Stroboscopic effect" hypothesis.

John


OK I'll byte...
Let's run with your hypothesis.
So what is your estimate for this jitter?  P-P and RMS ?

If you trigger on signal coming out of SDG1032X, delay from trigger 1ms, enable persistence, do you see smearing?
The way it looks on your screen, you should.

As for "stroboscopic" effect it might be unfortunate name. What you are doing is actually stroboscopy in a way, looking at the difference between signals.
Problem is that many digital scopes don't acquire data in regular intervals. They are actually capturing bursts, than pause and display and on. There is lot of jitter in that process.
It is not like with analog scopes where you have retrigger time and that's it, which guarantees uniform time between sweeps.
It is quite easy to get exactly the effect you see because of that. A jitter in display. And it is related with frequency difference, so sometimes you see it or don't....

And yes what I wrote is a hypothesis, not a proven fact. I don't have SDG1032X here to try, so I cannot claim anything.
You should not hang on to every word. You seem to be very eloquent in expressing yourself, and a stickler for every word said.
Don't do that. Many of us are not born English speakers, and nuances of languages are not something we do..  I know you just want to be very accurate, but it doesn't work that way...

Best regards,
Siniša


 Ok, it's my turn to "bite" :)

 The only way I can delay from the trigger point by 1ms is to use the zoom function and even this is insufficient to demonstrate this low frequency jitter. However, after a lot of knob twiddling, I managed to configure a timebase setting of 50ms/div (500ms per unzoomed scan) and build up a delay of 50ms from which point I could zoom down to a 10ns/div allowing me to examine a single cycle of the 10MHz square wave from the SDG1032 50ms after the trigger point. I used a 10 seconds persistence to reveal a level of jitter peaking at around 15 to 20ns pk-pk. This method of looking for such jitter is what I'd categorise as "Doing it the hard way."

 Obviously with a refresh rate of just 4 per second, I won't be seeing the full picture revealed by triggering from another 10MHz signal syntonised to the SDG1032's signal at the normal  unzoomed 10ns/div timebase setting (aka, "Doing it the easy way").

 I've attached a couple of photos showing the above results. I wanted to use a long exposure time to help enhance the 10 seconds persistence effect (the traces are rather thin and dim) and it took me a while to figure out how to adjust ISO, aperture and shutter speed selections in the manual mode but, after turning off extraneous light sources (my desktop PC monitor for one), I landed up with a 4 second and an 8 second exposure shot (tripod mounted and two second shutter delay to remove camera shake from pressing the shutter button).

 The 8 second exposure is the "money shot" but leaves the timebase settings over exposed, hence the 4 second exposure (which in hindsight, should have been a 1 or 2 second exposure to best reveal the settings).

 Of course, when you're using such a low frequency timebase in fine detail like this (a 100ns segment some 50ms after the trigger event) the question about jitter in the 'scope's timebase does enter one's mind but since I already had two independent low jitter 10MHz reference sources (the RFS and the 10MHz Sine wave phase locked to a 10MHz GPSDO) connected to the 'scope, I was able to trigger from either of those in turn and check a 100ns segment 50ms after the trigger event to examine what jitter, if any, there was on these signals by way of comparison.

 I'm happy to report that whilst there was some tiny hint of jitter, it did seem to all originate with the timebase rather than from the signals themselves. IOW, the jitter seen on the SDG1032's 10MHz sine wave using this technique was essentially all AWG with virtually no contribution from the SDS2504X Plus timebase.

 TBH, I think I'm seeing the evil jitter effect exhibited by that class of XO known as a DDS XO where singular frequency quartz blanks, produced by the million to cut costs, drives a DDS synthesiser, laser programmed to select the output frequency requested by the final customer.

 Not every application requires a low jitter clock source, especially those applications in cheap digital toys where such jitter is absolutely demanded to provide a built in "spread spectrum" EMC mitigation function to reduce interference on spot frequencies below the thresholds used in EMC compliance labs.

 Curious about just what sort of jitter one might expect from a 'modern day' dds based smd xo, I did a bit of research and landed up looking at a Silicon Labs datasheet here:

[url]https://www.silabs.com/documents/public/data-sheets/si510-11.pdf[/url]

Assuming Siglent would not be regarding the one dollar fifty cent cost per unit in thousand off quantities as excessive and be looking towards an even cheaper source (but, who knows what nasty cost cutting tricks their friggin' bean counters might be getting up to?), I could simply be looking at the effect of a faulty 'modern smd XO' rather than a systemic issue with the SDG1000X model range. :-//

 BTW, I don't disagree with the point you made regarding the fact that oscilloscopes are simply another form of stroboscopy. What I was disagreeing with was the hypothesis that this effect, common to all four channels, should pick out just the one that happened to be displaying the AWG's output, regardless of which channel was used,  leaving the other three to be displayed unmolested by any such a strobing effect.

 I know some DSOs (possibly even some specialised CROs) have the feature of displaying channels with independently triggered time bases but this model, afaiaa, offers no such feature (and I know I certainly haven't accidentally selected such a timebase/triggering mode).
 
 Anyhow, since I'm running out of time to effect a return with full refund on the basis of it not being fit for purpose, that's all rather academic now. There's quite clearly an LF flicker frequency like jitter effect going on which is afflicting the generator's output waveforms since it can be detected using both the hard and the easy ways to lift this particular rock to reveal this otherwise hidden gremlin.

 It's time I composed an email of complaint, with video attachment (or a link to one of these EEVBlog postings into SDG1000X related topic threads (two others besides this one) if their email client rejects such  or any attachments). Or, I might just start a new topic thread dedicated to this specific issue rather than direct them to here or any of the other two topic threads if their email client software does reject attachments. >:D

John


First I do not understand why you do not take just screen dump png from scope. is it somehow difficult? Yes I have read your nonsense explain about reason.  Screen dump show much more clearly all settings and it do not loose anything over example 10s persistence period. If not enough you can use longer persistence.

Nut it is not now important itself at all. Important is jitter you analyzed somehow. If I do this test I use different methods and I am not now familiar with this scope you have used here. I do not exactly know example its external reference lock performance and I do not know your external reference signal quality at all. All have error, more or less. What you see is Sum of all errors.

I am now very far from my homeland and from my workshop and I do not have my previous some test data here available at all.
What I remember is that SDG1000X clock jitter is more than SDG2000X. Also there was some weird things if use external reference for SDG1000X. I remember one test when external reference of course null average freq error but rise phase noise, specially very near carrier phase noise and this time my ext ref was for this purpose in practice better than enough good HP high grade DOCXO.


But now in your image, if I read it right. There is Trigger positio and then zoomed position is from around 45ms after trigger.
There can see roughly 11ns peak jitter. (22 peak to peak)
There can not well see, due to lack of data, its distribution. But most high (time) peaks are alone and least it can say distribution is not linear but also looks like not pure gaussian or just amount of data is not enough. Perhaps it can run example half hour or more with peersistence (because one shot takes more than 100ms so 10 sec you get least well under 100 acquisitions and this is really small amount. If you use other Sig model I perhaps know more exactly how many...)

So, in this small tiny displayed test setup you get total Peak jitter roughly 0.23 ppm including sum of all individual errors in whole setup. Including also of course oscilloscope trigger jitter. It is also fun, perhaps lack of enough experience for doing labs, you use relatively low signal amplitude - or in this case better say wrong V/Div setting in scope. Is it designed error or just random "who cares" error. What is reason you have selected trigger position far from middle position in rising edge. (in this case nearly nonsense but leat for me it tell something even when not explained why. With some frequencies it may affect more than with others but as we know final result is sum of ALL errors. Still I believe these some erros are not important in "big image".)

Also one side note. I have never understood why time position (delay) is displayed from center of screen. This is really stupid. But yes, these design engineers do not have 50 years of experience about using oscilloscopes. Right place where is time zero is trigger position where ever user have set it to fixed display position or fixed time position.. This is zero reference. Period.

Back to this jitter.

Oscilloscope nominal trigger jitter we can just ignore, it is under 10ps (RMS!) if signal 6 div and risetime 2ns.
But if oscilloscope run with its own reference clock  its jitter need take to count.
Even if it run with external clock its jitter need take to count. Including scope freq locking quality to this ext ref.
If we thing 10MHz. Just for imagine something... Think if frequency "jitter" 0.2ppm Peak. So this 10MHz  is sometimes up to 2Hz too high and sometimes 2Hz too low and mostly less off.

0.23ppm Peak in your image (If I look it right where is trigger and where is your zoomed window position. These photograps are so unclear / this is why mostly screen dump png is far better and also very small data size and lossless.)

Here is one old image from tests I have done. There is lot of images but as told this time I do not have more available.


For understand better this image it need more explanations due to fact in this image there is two different SA settings in one image. I do not explain here but blue trace can see part of SDG1000X near carrier "jitter". As can see, even with 10Hz RBW it can clearly see from around -35dBc that used tcxo and/or PLL is not at all best possible. (we know SSA RBW shape factor is bit under 1:5. Of course with 1Hz RBW, if used,  it can see starting from much higher level from carrier but because 10Hz is enough for detect this and 1Hz RBW is really LOT of more slow and testing time is limited....) If I remember right it can clearly see full level using 1Hz RBW and long time peak hold. After then it can see it is more wide than 1Hz RBW shape is even there in carrier peak level. It have clock jitter and it is not much better than its specs. And do not directly believe it is better with External clock until enough accurate and reliable tests. Average freq is totally other question. Of course it is as Ext ref is.

Because topic name is about harmonics here some images what are not whole OT.

Harmonics + non harmonics, 3, 3.7, 7, 9 and 10 MHz (note freq scale)



Harmonics + non harmonics, 10, 14.2, 21.2, 28, 30 MHz (note freq scale)



Harmonics + non harmonics, 30, 31.5, 40.8, 52 and 60 MHz  (note freq scale)






In all images SDH1062X run with its own reference and SA run with its own reference what is LOT of better than SDG reference..
In First image compared signal is from HP High Grade OCXO what have very low jitter and pn. Enormous amount better short time than my any crap Rb or some short time crap poor trimble GPS. Only one I have is better than this, it is HP Symmetricom GPS with "famous" HP DOCXO what I have made even better than out from factory (better optimized Owen temperature control fine matched for this individual xtal used there) But this was cold in this time and not want wait one month... for stabilize.

About specs. If look SDG2000X its reference initial is more than 10 times better accuracy.
Then if look example some jitter specs. SDG2000X square  (cycle to cycle) just 150ps RMS
But if look 1000X there is cycle to cycle 300ps + 0.05ppm of period RMS.   
Now there is used 10MHz but delay is long. It is nearly same if use square with long period. So this part is here roughly in 2ns class RMS! (0.05ppm from 45000000ns is 2.25ns.  and now, this is RMS, not Peak!

So my conclusion is, until know more: roughly this jitter you have detected now is more like in normal and somehow in specified class than individual failure.

Least if I see this kind of specifications I do not wonder if I find these results you have found
.

Who ever have SDG2000X, it is different animal.

Attached your image with text what is based for my opinion. If I have mistake when I read your image please correct me.


« Last Edit: October 04, 2020, 07:39:55 am by rf-loop »
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Online mawyatt

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Re: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion
« Reply #46 on: October 04, 2020, 02:58:08 pm »
Interesting analysis rf-loop.

I did not know just how good the SSA3021X Plus 10MHz reference oscillator was, but assumed it was the best I had available. So thanks for confirming this, again another pleasant surprise from Siglent :)

The AWG from the SDS2102X Plus DSO isn't bad, and certainly not as bad as what Johnny has shown. Makes me wonder if the SDG1032X and the AWG from the SDS2102X Plus are similar in design/components and maybe even XO. From what little experience I've had with Siglent gear, I haven't seen the kind of "specmanship" we see from other lower cost suppliers, if anything they seem to do very well with performance things that don't show up in the core specs, and why I suspect a defective XO.

I didn't consider the SDS2102X Plus AWG for precision use (why I got the SDG2042X), and I would not consider the SDG1032X AWG for precision use either, but would not expect this level "jitter" from either AWG and another reason I suspect that he has a defective XO in his AWG.

If someone that has this SDG1032X AWG and could do a simple test we would all know and I could quit "speculating" about the defective XO :o

Best,
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Online DL2XY

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Re: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion
« Reply #47 on: October 04, 2020, 04:29:52 pm »
Just for reference a jitter test taken somehow to extreme.

1Hz square wave taken 1s  after trigger (next rising edge) with 1ns/div resolution, acumultated over 5 minutes.

Used Equipment: SDG6052X, SDS2054X+ and EFRATOM MFS Rubidium normal (R&S).

SDG6052 drift and 1s jitter with internal XO:
1082508-0

SDG6052 drift and 1s jitter with external 10Mhz (MFS):
1082512-1

10 MHz MFS drift and 1s jitter directly measured. (MFS [ Specified attachment is not available ] and SDS2054):
1082516-3

The difference between internal and external clock is not really that big, about a half of total jitter and drift seems to belong to scope timebase. 
« Last Edit: October 04, 2020, 04:35:19 pm by DL2XY »
 

Online mawyatt

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Re: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion
« Reply #48 on: October 04, 2020, 05:09:45 pm »
I think these delayed or "zoom" type jitter measurements are asking a lot from the scope trigger and sweep performance. Triggering and waiting 1ms, 50ms even 1s and looking for ns randomness seems difficult for any DSO much less a modest priced DSO. Actually impressed they can do this well.

If you think about what's happening, the trigger circuit is trying to trigger on exactly the same sampled voltage, but noise, quantization and other things place some randomness on this, then the delay circuit must wait the prescribed delay period which is DSO clock dependent and subject to some jitter, then the sweep starts for the display which is also subject to some uncertainty. Sure all these are created from the sampled data from the ADC, but still subjected to the ADC clock jitter which is based upon the DSO clock.

I see very little evidence of jitter from any source; SDG2042X, SDS2102X Plus DSO AWG or SSA3021X 10MHz reference regardless of the delay, so the DSO must not have much jitter on it's clock either.

I don't see any difference between using the delay "Holdoff" trigger or "Zoom" feature.

Here's using the Zoom with delay of 1s on SDG2042X AWG


The SSA3021X Plus 10MHZ reference with 1s delay


The SDS2102X Plus AWG with 1s delay


Best,

« Last Edit: October 04, 2020, 06:08:29 pm by mawyatt »
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Offline TurboTom

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Re: Siglent SDG1032X Harmonic Distorsion
« Reply #49 on: October 04, 2020, 06:18:04 pm »
A modern DSO is very well suited for that job since all the processing stages after the sampling engine are completely deterministic. Everything relates to the quality of the sampling timebase and possible jitter in the ADC's sampling section (which should be neglible in case of the ADC08D1000, TI specifies a sampling aperture delay jitter of 0.8ps rms, its chinese copy MXT2001 that's probably used in the SDS2000X Plus shouldn't perform much worse).

So either a high quality reference or possibly an external ref input, combined with a properly designed PLL (Rigol delivered a major failure here almost a decade ago...) is mandatory for these kinds of measurements. Otherwise, when measuring half-way decent frequency sources, all that one will see on the screen of his scope is the scope's own timebase jitter.
 


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