Real-time compensation of static distortion by measurement of differential noise gain

It is well-known that in a cascaded system of amplifiers the majority of noise is due to the first stage and the majority of distortion due to the final stage. Consequently, the observed noise at the output is subject to the same nonlinear process as the signal of interest. We use this fact to characterise the distorting process and linearise the system in real-time using statistical measurements of this noise.