Capturing low-duty-cycle pulsed signals with high quality is crucial for many applications in optics and photonics, nanotechnology and materials science, quantum technologies, scanning probe microscopy, and sensing. Boxcar averagers are attractive tools to achieve a high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in a minimal amount of measurement time when working with low-duty-cycle signals. Such signals contain relevant information in a short time interval, while the rest of the period contains only noise. A boxcar averager captures the signal from a well-defined temporal window in each period, meaning that all signal components outside of that window are rejected.
Principles of Boxcar Averaging
Video credit: Zurich Instruments
Unlike a digitizer or an oscilloscope, the measurement results are immediately available in the digital domain and as analog signals with a user-defined offset and scaling factor. Moreover, integrated PID controllers can process the results to create feedback loops and a lock-in amplifier unit can perform demodulation on the boxcar results if an additional modulation is present.
In this app note, we illustrate the working principle of a digital boxcar averager, discuss the relevant measurement parameters, and provide guidelines for the best choice of measurement technique when working with periodic signals.
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This information has been sourced, reviewed and adapted from materials provided by Zurich Instruments AG.
For more information on this source, please visit Zurich Instruments AG.