what is the summary of paragraph 6 from Getting In Sync?
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Measurement synchronization is one of the most important points to keep in mind when writing any remote-control application. Neglecting this aspect of your program leads to unpredictable behavior, unrepeatable results and a lot of frustration. A clear sign of improper measurement synchronization is having to insert fixed pauses into your application in order to get it running.
Let us first define Measurement Synchronization for the purpose of this chapter:
Today’s measurement instruments are complex devices with their own operating systems. Your measurement application does not have to care about the instrument's status all the time. Measurement synchronization is the method by which you make sure, that at important points of your program (SyncPoints), your instrument is in the state you expect.
An example of measurement synchronization with an oscilloscope and a DUT that generates a non-periodic signal:

From the picture above, you see there are idle sections in your program that have to wait for the instrument to catch up. Notice that these idle times are dynamic in length. They have to adapt to the different conditions (e.g. speed of your PC, different instrument settling and acquisition times). How can you achieve this? The best way is to let the instrument tell you when it is ready. Different synchronization methods are presented after the following notes.
Additional notes:
Always operate an acquisition instrument (Oscilloscope, Spectrum Analyzer, Powermeter…) in singleacquisition mode. Only then, you can be sure your measurement results come from the last completed acquisition, not from the one before or from the not yet completed acquisition. Most importantly: any synchronization method works properly only in the single acquisition mode.
Basic settings and Trigger settings do not need to be synchronized. The only important key point comes at the end where you want to make sure all the settings have been applied (SyncPoint ‘SettingsApplied’).
After the trigger has arrived, the oscilloscope starts waveform acquisition. Your program must wait until it has finished (SyncPoint ‘AcquisitionFinished’).
Reading the waveform after this SyncPoint makes sure the result comes from the most recent acquisition.
Let us first define Measurement Synchronization for the purpose of this chapter:
Today’s measurement instruments are complex devices with their own operating systems. Your measurement application does not have to care about the instrument's status all the time. Measurement synchronization is the method by which you make sure, that at important points of your program (SyncPoints), your instrument is in the state you expect.
An example of measurement synchronization with an oscilloscope and a DUT that generates a non-periodic signal:

From the picture above, you see there are idle sections in your program that have to wait for the instrument to catch up. Notice that these idle times are dynamic in length. They have to adapt to the different conditions (e.g. speed of your PC, different instrument settling and acquisition times). How can you achieve this? The best way is to let the instrument tell you when it is ready. Different synchronization methods are presented after the following notes.
Additional notes:
Always operate an acquisition instrument (Oscilloscope, Spectrum Analyzer, Powermeter…) in singleacquisition mode. Only then, you can be sure your measurement results come from the last completed acquisition, not from the one before or from the not yet completed acquisition. Most importantly: any synchronization method works properly only in the single acquisition mode.
Basic settings and Trigger settings do not need to be synchronized. The only important key point comes at the end where you want to make sure all the settings have been applied (SyncPoint ‘SettingsApplied’).
After the trigger has arrived, the oscilloscope starts waveform acquisition. Your program must wait until it has finished (SyncPoint ‘AcquisitionFinished’).
Reading the waveform after this SyncPoint makes sure the result comes from the most recent acquisition.
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