Agilent Technologies N5183A MXG - Manual (Page 206)

196 Agilent N518xA, E8663B, E44x8C, and E82x7D Signal Generators Programming Guide
Creating and Downloading Waveform Files
Waveform Phase Continuity
Avoiding Phase Discontinuities
You can easily avoid phase discontinuities for periodic waveforms by simulating an integer number of
cycles when you create your waveform segment.
NOTE If there are N samples in a complete cycle, only the first N- 1 samples are stored in the
waveform segment. Therefore, when continuously playing back the segment, the first and Nth
waveform samples are always the same, preserving the periodicity of the waveform.
By adding off time at the beginning of the waveform and subtracting an equivalent amount of off
time from the end of the waveform, you can address phase discontinuity for TDMA or pulsed periodic
waveforms. Consequently, when the waveform repeats, the lack of signal present avoids the issue of
phase discontinuity.
However, if the period of the waveform exceeds the waveform playback memory available in the
arbitrary waveform generator, a periodic phase discontinuity could be unavoidable. N5110B Baseband
Studio for Waveform Capture and Playback alleviates this concern because it does not rely on the
signal generator waveform memory. It streams data either from the PC hard drive or the installed
PCI card for N5110B enabling very large data streams. This eliminates any restrictions associated
with waveform memory to correct for repetitive phase discontinuities. Only the memory capacity of
the hard drive or the PCI card limits the waveform size.
Sampled Sinewave with Phase Discontinuity
Waveform length
discontinuity
Phase