An identification technique for data acquisition characterization in the presence of nonlinear distortions and time base distortions

The nonlinear behavior of data acquisition channels and analog-to-digital converters is often measured using sine-wave measurements. High-frequency sampling scopes also suffer from time base distortions. This implies that the signals are sampled at a nonequidistant time grid. This paper describes a robust and efficient identification technique to characterize acquisition channels which suffer from both nonlinear distortions and/or time base distortions in the presence of both additive and jitter noise. An automatic model selection scheme and the generation of uncertainty bounds are obtained through the statistical properties of the proposed simulator. The applicability of the method is demonstrated on both simulations and measurements of high-frequency sampling scopes.