1 U8480 Series Remote Operation
52 U8480 Series Programming Guide
Output format
The U8480 Series has two output formats for measurement results: ASCii and
REAL. These formats are selected using the FORMat command. When FORMat is set
to REAL, the returned result is in the IEEE-754 floating-point format (note that the
byte order can be changed using FORMat:BORDer).
The REAL format is likely to be required only for the FAST mode as it reduces the
amount of bus traffic.
Units
The U8480 Series can output results in either linear or log units. The internal units
are linear; therefore optimal performance is achieved when the results output are
also in linear units (since the overhead of performing a log function is removed).
Command used
In the Free Run mode, FETCh? must be used to return a result.
In other trigger modes, there are a number of queries that can be used, for
example, MEASure?, READ?, FETCh?. Note that the MEAS? and READ? queries are
compound commands — they perform a combination of other lower-level
commands. Typically, the best speed performance is achieved using the low-level
commands directly.
Trigger count
To get the fastest measurement speed, TRIG:COUNt must be set to return multiple
measurements for each FETCh? query. For average only measurements, a count of
4 is required; however, 10 is recommended.
Fast mode
In the highest speed setting, the limiting factor tends to be the speed of the
controller being used to retrieve results from the U8480 Series, and to a certain
extent, the volume of remote traffic. The latter can be reduced using the FORMat
REAL command to return results in the binary format. The former is a combination
of two factors:
– the hardware platform being used
– the programming environment being used
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