Distortion effects on Linear measurements, Part 3

This posting will just be some more examples of the artefacts caused by symmetrical clipping of the measurement signal for the MLS and swept-sine methods, clipping at different levels.

Remember that the clip level is relative to the peak level of the measurement signal.

MLS

MLS, clipping at 0.9 of peak level

MLS, clipping at 0.7 of peak level

MLS, clipping at 0.5 of peak level

MLS, clipping at 0.3 of peak level

MLS, clipping at 0.1 of peak level

Swept Sine

Swept Sine, clipping at 0.9 of peak level

Swept Sine, clipping at 0.7 of peak level

Swept Sine, clipping at 0.5 of peak level

Swept Sine, clipping at 0.3 of peak level

Swept Sine, clipping at 0.1 of peak level

The take-home message here is that, although both the MLS and the swept sine methods suffer from showing you strange things when the DUT is clipping, the swept sine method is much less cranky…

In the next posting, I’ll explain why this is the case.