Agilent Technologies 86038A User Manual page 136

Remote Operation
136
The normalization will be performed on the enabled port(s). If both
Tip:
ports are enabled, both ports will be normalized in one sweep, which
requires an external coupler. If you do not want the coupler to be included
in the normalization, you can temporarily enable port 1, normalize, then
enable port 2, normalize, and then enable both ports for measurement.
The sleep statement is used above to slow the loop down - you do not
want to query the ODA hundreds of times a second. To use the sleep
command, you need to declare it at the top of your module:
Private Declare Sub Sleep Lib "Kernel32" (ByVal dwMilliseconds As Long)
Phase dynamic accuracy (PDA) is used to correct for amplitude-to-phase
conversion effects in the measurement receiver. If your test device
exhibits no loss variation across the wavelength range, then do not run
PDA, as it adds approximately 7 minutes to the normalization time. The
command to enable it:
odaClient.NormalizationRange.PDAEnabled = True
7 Measure
Trigger the measurement, then wait for the sweep to complete. This looks
very much like normalization:
' Make sure not connected for normalization
MsgBox ("Connect ODA for measurement")
' Start the sweep
odaClient.Actions.Measure
' Let sweep get started before polling
Sleep 1000
Dim elapsedTime As Double
elapsedTime = 0
' Poll the ODA waiting for the sweep to complete
' NOTE: 30 minutes may not be long enough!
Do
DoEvents
Sleep (100)
elapsedTime = elapsedTime + 100
If elapsedTime / 1000 / 60 > 30 Then Exit Do
Loop Until odaClient.Status.TriggerComplete = True
8 Transfer Data
Now that there is valid data in the ODA, you will want to transfer it out. To
determine the wavelength axis, read the start and stop wavelengths and
the number of points (You can determine the number of points in the
returned arrays.) then calculate the wavelength for each point as part of
your application.
Recommended Control Sequence
Agilent 86038A Optical Dispersion Analyzer, Third Edition