Digital Sampling Criteria: Amplitude-domain Statistics
Ian P. Castro · 2021
If a signal is to be analysed using analogue electronics only, a major question facing the experimenter—in addition to those concerning instrument amplitude and frequency bandwidth—is that of the required integration time. There are in general two ways of representing analogue data digitally. It is most often used for data transmission over long distances or for speech transmission. It is worth pointing out that, in many circumstances, quantisation errors can be significantly reduced by using non-linear step sizes. In some applications, it is necessary to measure the complete probability density function of the signal rather than just some of the moments. Attention has been concentrated thus far on the statistical errors which arise when using a finite number of statistically independent sample values. Whilst remarks made in this chapter are largely in the context of the BBC software, a similar approach was taken for the PC version of the package.