SA44B as a trigger source for BB60C

Hi, I’d like to use my SA44B in Zero Span mode using video trigger to output that trigger to a BB60C and BB60D is there any way to do this?

I can’t think of a way to make that work. Unfortunately the SA44B triggering is really only for the tracking generators. Although we have not implemented it in firmware, the SM200 / SM435 would be capable of exporting a video trigger as a logic signal, but the BB and SA series would not. That being said, a detector diode and a comparator could generate a trigger off of a certain RF amplitude…

Justin,
Thank you for the response. I am once again trying to accomplish a similar task. I would like to have my bb60c and bb60d both in zero span with a video trigger setup in software. From there I would like each device to output a trigger pulse when the video trigger is triggered, from there I would like to use an oscilloscope to measure the delay between the two triggers. Is this possible with the API?

Hello,

This scenario is also unfortunately not something you are going to be able to make work with the capabilities of the BB60s. The video trigger is a function of software running on the PC, so it’s fully post acquisition and USB transfer. Any sort of trigger mechanism using the video trigger detection would have very poor resolution.

Additionally the BB60s are not really a good choice for generating a pulse. One of the ports can be configured as a logic high or low, but the resolution on this is very poor.

There might be an alternative way to accomplish this. If you have an external trigger source, such as a GPS PPS signal, that you could route that to both BB60s, the API will mark the position in I/Q stream where the external triggers occur and you could measure them relative to the video triggers you detect. A rather elaborate setup and some code to tie it together, but that should give you something like 40ns of resolution on the timing differences between 2 BB60s.

Our other devices, the SM and SP analyzers, have an internal GPS, which with a GPS antenna could be used to timestamp the data, which would also give you a relative timing between the 2 analyzers of ~40ns, essentially trading the need for an external trigger source with an external GPS antenna for each receiver. The timestamping is all done automatically, so the final code might be slightly simpler.

Let us know if you have follow up questions.

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