Distortion characterization of exponential signal generated by AWG

In the paper is proposed a procedure to characterize the distortion of the exponential signal generated by Arbitrary Wave Generator (AWG). The basis of the procedure is the same in the case the AWG is set to generate sinusoidal signal. In particular, the resulting signal from the difference between the exponential generated signal and the sinusoidal reference one is digitalized by low resolution and high sampling frequency acquisition system. The Prony-like method is used to evaluate the distortion parameters of the reconstructed exponential signal by the zero crossing time sequence and the reference signal parameters extracted from the resulting signal. The characteristics of the exponential signal address the specific changes respect to the sinusoidal one. The changes concern with (i) the use of only one channel of the acquisition system, (ii) the extraction of the proper subset of the resulting signal valid to extract the parameters of the reference signal, and (iii) the frequency setting of the reference signal to ensure the reconstruction of the exponential shape with high slope. Numerical and experimental tests validate the proposed method.