Agilent Technologies E5100A, Programming Manual, Page: 53 / 373

Data Transfer Methods
This section describes the data transfer methods . When you get or send the data array's data,
there are two methods for data transfer: ASCII and binary .
Figure 3-3. Simplied Internal Process of ASCII and Binary Transfer
Because the ASCII transfer passes through the formatted process , the program does not care
about the data format. On the other hand, the binary transfer directly passes the data, but you
have to indicate what data is transferred using the data header . The binary transfer is faster
than the ASCII transfer .
ASCII Transfer
The ASCII format transfer is the easiest way to transfer array data between the analyzer and
the controller . Y ou do not have to worry about the data format because the analyzer and the
controller automatically handles the formatting of the transferred data in this format. Y ou can
just send or retrieve array data by using the OUTPUT and ENTER statements .
The ASCII transfer format is sent as a 14-character (data) or 22-character (stimulus) string for
each data point. This string includes a digit, sign or decimal point. Therefore , the data length
of 201 points of complex data is 6030 bytes . (Including data delimiter \LF" for each data.)
T o retrieve data from the analyzer using the ASCII format transfer , the following procedure is
used:
1. Dene a data array that is the same size as the data to be retrieved.
Data Processing and T ransfer 3-7