Making custom measurements with high-speed digitizers - In the FPGA or host processor

Test instrumentation, including digitizers (also known as PC-based oscilloscopes), has continued to offer higher sampling speeds and better resolution to keep up with the ever-increasing demands of devices under test. Test instrumentation usability has also improved by allowing the end user, instead of the vendor, to define instrument functionality and create programs to run on the PC and even the digitizer, which better harness the hardware capabilities of the instrument. This effectively allows a digitizer to be used as an oscilloscope, a spectrum analyzer, or even a custom instrument in a niche application. No matter what the application, one thing is in common: the need for increasing amounts of test data continues to be an issue. This paper discusses how to overcome the challenges of managing and processing the large amounts of data acquired by a high-speed digitizer.