A New Coherent Sampling System with a Triggered Time Interpolation

SUMMARY Equivalent-time sampling is a well-known technique to capture repetitive signals at finer time intervals than a sampling clock cycle time and it is widely used to implement waveform measurement with high time resolution. There are three techniques for implementing its time base (i.e., sequential sampling, random sampling and coherent sampling), and they have their respective advantages and disadvantages. In this paper we propose a new coherent sampling system which incorporates a pretrigger and time jitter reduction function for a fluctuating input signal which a random sampling system has, while maintaining the waveform recording efficiency of a conventional coherent sampling system. We also report on a technique for measuring a reference trigger time period accurately which is necessary to implement the proposed sampling system, and show its effectiveness through numerical calculations of its data recording time.