DRT
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
Digital Real Time (DRT) is a term used by Tektronix to refer to digitizing scopes that digitize signals at full bandwidth. This is in contrast to equivalent time sampling. The advantages of Digital Real Time are:
- ability to acquire and display one-shot signals at full bandwidth
- low latency to see changes in the signal
- elimination of the ambiguity that results from multiple repetitions of the signal being interleaved into a single display
This feature is present TDS Series scopes.
Examples of non-DRT digitizing scopes in Tek's product line are the equivalent-time scopes such as the 11402. An 11402 can display a waveform with picosecond temporal resolution. For example, it can
- display 500 MHz ringing on a 100 MHz square wave
- measure the propagation delay of a logic gate to within a few 10s of picoseconds
- measure the risetime of a pulse to a few hundred picoseconds, usually limited by the plug-ins.
However, equivalent-time scopes only work if the signal is repetitive. And if the signal has low repetition rate, the screen updates slowly. The instant display of Digital Real Time scopes was a selling point.