Stop on Trigger

b y Tom Lecklider, Senior Technical Editor

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Your oscilloscope must-have list probably starts with bandwidth, sampling rate, memory length, and number of channels but what comes next? Triggering also is a major part of the equation, and if youre working with serial buses, triggering may even be higher on the list than the usual faster, deeper, wider marketing favorites. Analog triggering today includes types such as slew rate, pulse width, edge, and runt that are implemented by combinations of analog comparators operating on a copy of the input signal. Rather than examining the analog signal, instruments that implement so-called digital triggering generate the trigger from the digitized channel data. Trigger types that directly depend on the signals shape are called basic in this article. These operate on the signal before it has been acquired and stored. Those trigger types that occur after signal acquisition are termed post-acquisition.

Extending Basic Analog Triggering Capabilities

Some early implementations of glitch triggering simply determined that a narrow pulse had occurred. Todays scopes may combine glitch and pulse width modes and allow triggering if a pulse is shorter or longer than a preset time. An analog comparator starts a timer once the threshold has been crossed. If the comparator has been reset before the timer stops, a glitch has occurred. Adding positive feedback from a comparators output to its noninverting input establishes two threshold levels. When anticipating a positive-going trigger event, the upper threshold is set. Once crossed, the threshold is reduced to the lower level. The comparator output cannot change until the lower threshold is crossed in the negative-going direction. This use of hysteresis is a form of noise filtering that is especially effective for slowly changing signals. Figure 1 shows six types of analog triggers and accompanies each with a small diagram to illustrate how the trigger works. These drawings were used in a Tektronix document, but most scopes provide similar aids to help you correctly set the trigger parameters.

Extolling Digital Triggering

Pico Technology, Rohde & Schwarz, and Yokogawa Test and Measurement have opted for digital triggering. Pico was one of the pioneers, introducing digital scope triggering in 1991 and featuring it in today's 6000 Series Oscilloscopes. Mark Ashcroft, program manager at the company, explained, As well as having better timing and electrical specifications than analog triggering, digital comparator triggering allows multiple comparators, typically at no extra cost and thus much greater flexibility. Different thresholds can be applied to each channel as well as up to two thresholds, each with hysteresis, per channel. Yokogawa uses digital triggering in the ScopeCorder product line.

Yasuaki Takeuchi, digital oscilloscope product manager at the company, said that the instrument can process the waveform data in real time while sampling at a rate up to 10 MS/s. Takeuchi explained, The real-time math function includes fundamental arithmetic operation between channels, differential/integral, rms, high-pass/low-pass digital filtering, pulse count/frequency/period, and some power parameters calculated from voltage and current waveforms. The user can trigger on any of these calculated channels. One could argue, as does Dave Rishavy, product manager oscilloscopes R&S USA, that having a separate analog trigger path is often a case of historical architectures and devices. It is true that because R&S did not have a line of performance scopes until a few years ago, the company could start from a blank sheet of paper. Rishavy cited digital triggerings drawbacks as complexity and cost. Digital triggering in an R&S scope required a custom ASIC in addition to new hardware and software designs. Also, this type of system cannot trigger on a large off-screen signal. According to Rishavy, digital triggerings advantages include the following: If it is on screen, you can trigger on it. There is minimal additional residual trigger jitter for maximum precision. Triggering is possible on every

Figure 1. Six Analog Triggering Modes Source: Tektronix

event. (There are no re-arm times as with analog trigger.) Any chosen DSP filtering that is applied to the signal also can be realized in the trigger path. It supports variable hysteresis band for noise reject. Triggering on RF envelope or narrow pulses is possible at full scope bandwidth. In a sequential A followed by B trigger, the minimum hold-off time is virtually zero. Very high-speed pulse width triggers are supported since the sample rate of the ADC really is the limit to the trigger. The R&S scope architecture uses high-speed DSP-based filtering to adjust channel-to-channel delays as well as provide actual frequency-domain filtering.

Accommodating Analog Triggering

Scopes with separate trigger and signal paths exhibit timing jitter from one to the other, contributing to trace blurring at the trigger point. In todays pixel displays that typically have fewer than 1,000 horizontal locations, interpolation is required to reduce jitter while aligning waveforms to a fixed trigger location. The 2004 Weller, Draving, and Urban U.S. patent 06753677 assigned to Agilent Technologies explained one way that this could be accomplished: The voltage threshold for the trigger level in use by the trigger circuit can be compared to the region proximate the trigger location in the acquisition record to determine by further local interpolation the precise location in the acquisition record where the triggering event should have occurred. This allows the determination of a correct and jitter-free horizontal position value. Actual display of the desired portion of each new acquisition record then proceeds by supplying to the display rendering system a corrected associated horizontal position value.1 Agilents Johnnie Hancock, applications program manager at the company, said, Agilents InfiniiVision X-Series oscilloscopes utilize analog comparator triggering for all of the hardware-based trigger selections (edge, pulse width, rise/fall time, logic, etc.). With analog-type triggering, trigger jitter is in the 10s of picoseconds range, which typically is more than sufficient for scopes with bandwidths of 1.5 GHz and below. Hancock continued, Agilents higher performance Infiniium Series oscilloscopes also employ a software-based correction called jitter-free. With jitter-free, the placement of the waveform is corrected for each and every acquisition to provide subpicosecond timing resolution (trigger jitter).

Digital Also Needs Some Help

For a repetitive signal that is asynchronous with respect to the sampling clock, a particular point within the (repeating) signal will occur at all possible positions within a clock cycle. This means that if the trigger point happened to occur immediately after a sampling edge, the fact that the signal had crossed the threshold would not be recorded until the next edge assuming the signal had stayed above the threshold. You may ask, which digital word actually represents the trigger point in the waveform? In the RTO, R&S uses an interpolator to up-sample the trigger data by a factor of two, creating a 20-GS/s trigger data stream. As explained in an R&S application note, the higher rate helps to ensure that waveform peaks are better represented. If two of the basic 10-GS/s samples happened to fall either side of a peak higher than the trigger threshold, the trigger event could be missed. Given the RTOs band-limited frequency response, up-sampling to 20 GS/s is sufficient to minimize this problem theres a limit to the size of signal excursions that can occur between samples. The higher rate interpolated trigger data points are compared to the threshold. However, the factor of two only reduces the trigger position uncertaintyit doesnt eliminate it. According to the application note, The RTO uses poly-phase filters that can calculate the measurement signal at any timing point with a signal-to-noise ratio >90 dB. The intersection of the measurement signal and the trigger threshold is calculated in real time using an iterative approach with an accuracy of 250 fs.2 Digital triggering eliminates the errors associated with a separate analog path, but the raw ADC data only identifies the trigger point to within one sample period. And, as evidenced by the factor of two up-sampling R&S applies, its quite possible for an unsophisticated digital trigger system to miss a trigger all together. The key to the performance R&S achieves is the digital filtering that supports accurate trigger-point determination.

More Complex Basic Triggering

The old analog scope A-intensified-by-B dual time-base mode of operation predates todays more flexible A-B trigger systems. With A-intensified-by-B enabled and the B time base set to a time/div smaller than that set for A, a bright portion of the A sweep could be positioned using the 10-turn delay control. Setting the B trigger level appropriately and switching to Bonly displayed just the intensified portion of the waveform, but at the B time-base rate. The Tektronix 2215A dual-trace analog scope featured calibrated A time-base ranges from 0.5 s/div to 50 ns/div and a B time base from 50 ms/div to 50 ns/div. Magnification of 10x extended the fastest sweep speed to 5 ns/div. In todays Tektronix scopes, Pinpoint triggering also features two trigger systems but without the earlier restrictions. As in the 2215A, the A trigger is the first or primary trigger. Both it and the subsequent B trigger can be any of the basic types:

 Edge Glitch Width Timeout Runt

Transition Set/Hold Pattern State (clocked pattern)

This issues slot-machine graphic on the cover depicts pattern triggering in which a trigger event is defined as the coincidence of logic states on three of the scopes channels. If selected, the B trigger follows the A trigger and is delayed by a preset amount of time or a number of events. For example, the B trigger could wait for a glitch to appear at least 100 s after the A trigger pattern. There are more than 1,400 combinations of A-B triggering available with the Tektronix Pinpoint system. NOTE: The distinction between digital triggering and logic triggering (pattern and state) is fundamental: Logic triggering describes combinations of signal states on multiple channels that together constitute the trigger condition. Digital triggering or analog triggering is the low-level technique used to determine if a basic trigger has occurred. Cross-domain triggering is a feature of scopes that combine analog and digital channels (MSOs) or analog, digital, and spectrum analyzer channels as in Teks MDO4000. Teledyne LeCroys Chris Busso, senior product marketing manager, used the term cross-pattern triggering to describe the combination of some condition on the analog channels together with a preset pattern on the digital inputs. Interestingly, he also explained, Event triggering can be configured to arm on an analog signal and trigger on a digital pattern. Arming always is associated with starting an acquisition. To achieve 50% pretrigger, for example, sufficient samples must be Evaluation Engineering, January 2014 acquired before the trigger, and this means that arming has to happen first and far enough in advance. Similar to the old analog trigger hold-off function, arming must disable triggering until the selected amount of pretrigger data has been captured. Arming and trigger hold off also come into play when specifying a succession of acquisition segments. Each segment must have captured sufficient pretrigger data before the trigger can be enabled. Picos Ashcroft described a hardware rapid triggering mode that achieves a re-arm time of only 1 s to 2 s. This feature supports a capture rate of up to 1 million waveforms per second for short acquisitions and increases the probability of capturing transient events.

Post-Acquisition Triggering
Mask testing predates the post-acquisition operations available today. When it first appeared in the 1980s, the only goal was to compare captured waveforms to a graphical limit such as industry-standard amplitude and timing values for telecommunications signals. Agilents Hancock said that although mask testing wasnt thought of as an oscilloscope trigger, the companys InfiniiVision X-Series oscilloscopes can perform mask testing at rates up to 280,000 waveforms-tests/s. All waveforms are displayed with the failing portions highlighted in red where the waveform intersects the pass/fail mask. R&S goes a bit farther, the companys Rishavy stating that the mask evaluation provides a trigger-like function. Finally, according to the Tektronix Pinpoint trigger document, The Comm (Communication) Trigger appears in the A-Event

menu in the Pinpoint trigger system. Mask testing involves triggering the waveform in such a way that it can be compared to an industry-standard mask template. Selections of triggering are AMI, HDB3, BnZS, CMI, MLT3, and NRZ encoded communications signals up to 1.5 Gb/s and 8b/10b encoded serial data up to 6.25 Gb/s.3 Taken together, these comments help explain the continuing shift in the meaning of trigger terminology. Today, as R&S Rishavy noted, Users often describe a trigger as something they simply want to stop on. So, mask testing, serial-bus test/triggering, power calculations performed on Yokogawas ScopeCorderany of these things can provide an event to stop acquisition relative to the way you want the displayed trace to appear. Post-acquisition triggering originally was done in software. A trace was acquired by using a basic trigger and then compared to limitseither a polygon-shaped mask or a horizontal/vertical band around a reference waveform. Serial-bus triggering involves conversion from samples to bits, several sources stating a minimum ratio of at least four samples per bit. Some companies refer to the initial basic trigger as prequalification to better associate triggering with the final, post-acquisition event. As Agilents Hancock noted, Serial triggering on [the] InfiniiVision X-Series oscilloscope is not a post-acquisition trigger. It is truly an on-the-fly hardware-based trigger. Also, the companys Zone Trigger feature that allows the user to enable triggering by drawing a box around a suitable waveform feature isnt as software-centric as it may appear. For sure, software interprets the conditions included in the finger-drawn box, but hardware within the scopes MegaZoom IV chip performs the actual waveform comparisons. A serial data-triggering example that uses two zone boxes is shown in Figure 2. The R&S RTO also uses hardware-based mask evaluation.

Figure 2. Triggering on Isolated Ones Using Two Must Not Intersect Zones along with a Rising Edge Trigger Courtesy of Agilent Technologies And, Yokogawas Takeuchi confirmed, The DLM Series oscilloscope triggering is realized by the use of dedicated hardware. Not only the simple edge trigger, but also the enhanced triggers such as serial-bus data trigger are realized by the use of an optimized hardware configuration to offer a quick update rate. Yokogawa does not use post-acquisition process for trigger detection.

Most of the triggering for Teledyne LeCroys HDO4000/6000-MS mixed-signal scopes is based on hardware. The companys Busso named several basic trigger types and also included serial data triggers in the hardware list. He cited two postacquisition trigger types with unusual capabilities. Conditions such as less than, greater than, inside or outside a range, or dont care can be applied to a measurement to create a trigger event. You could use this feature to trigger on a change in frequency, for example. WaveScan, the other special trigger capability, can detect anomalies within a single capture and also can operate in continuous scanning mode, constantly monitoring incoming acquisitions, according to Busso. Teledyne LeCroys WaveScan identifies the consistent signal parameters within successive acquisitions and attempts to trigger on a range of user-selectable exceptions. Teks Visual Triggering is very similar to classical mask testing on up to eight trapezoidal areas with the distinction that failing acquisitions are discarded to speed up the comparison process. And, Picos Ashcroft explained, The [PicoScope] software can be programmed to ignore hardware-triggered data until an arbitrary pattern is detected. Each field of the packet or frame is compared to a trigger value, and only when a matching packet is detected does the software start to display decoded data.

Finding the Best Scope for You

What do you mean by triggering? Even the often-used distinction between basic pre- and post-acquisition triggering has become less important as custom ASICs and fast FPGAs provide real-time identification of reference events. As explained by Ben James, product marketing engineer for NI FlexRIO at National Instruments, FPGA-based triggering provides unique solutions to traditional triggering problems. [Because] FPGAs can process incoming samples faster than the ADC can produce them, it is possible to guarantee that every sample is seen and processed continuously. By implementing trigger logic digitally in the FPGA, you can achieve a zero-sample re-arm time, which guarantees that no samples are missed. Regardless of the data source (analog or digital), FPGA-based triggers can range from the basic edge or threshold detection to complex patterns or cross-domain schemes. Through complete control of the data path and custom triggering capabilities, implementing a trigger on the FPGA allows the trigger to span multiple devices, span analog or digital, be protocol aware, and have zero re-arm time. If you prefer not to develop oscilloscope trigger capabilities yourself, the best advice may be to concentrate on a scopes range of problem-solving functions relevant to your applications. Dont worry too much about how they are implemented. Besides, if you need bandwidth greater than 4 GHz, all the available so-called real-time scopes use analog triggering anyway. Nevertheless, whats under the hood can make a difference to specification extremes and, in turn, to your troubleshooting effectiveness. As an example, consider the emphasis put on waveform update rate in recent years. It is true that a higher update rate enhances your chance of catching an infrequently occurring anomaly. Therefore, it follows that a hardwarebased waveform compare capability with its higher throughput rate than a software-based system could be a benefit. Its also true that some software-based post-acquisition systems operate very quickly and may be available on lower cost scopes.

References
1. Weller, D.J., et al, Trigger jitter reduction for an internally triggered real time digital oscilloscope, Patent 06753677, June 22, 2004. 2. Schulze, G., and Freidhof. M., Benefits of the R&S RTO Oscilloscopes Digital Trigger, Rohde & Schwarz, Application Note, April 2012. 3. Triggering Fundamentals with Pinpoint Triggering and Event Search&Mark for DPO7000, MSO/DPO/DSA70000 Series Oscilloscopes, Tektronix, 2011.