The following list explains the five sources of synchronization error you may encounter when you synchronize two or more devices while acquiring analog signals.

  • Skew - the relative difference in time between when identical aligned samples are taken on synchronized devices.
  • Drift - the amount of time that the sample time moves relative to the clock source. Devices can have low skew and low jitter but still drift.
  • Sampler jitter - the amount of variability in timing between two samples on the same channel or between two channels on the same device.
  • Trigger jitter - the amount of variability in timing between devices that share a trigger.
  • Repeatability - describes the consistency of the errors above when the device is power cycled.