Further Investigation for Piecewise Sampling to Overcome Transient Effect of Staircase Waveform

• Published in: IEEE transactions on instrumentation and measurement 2017-06, Vol.66 (6), p.1217-1226
• Main Authors: Zuliang Lu, Yan Yang, Lu Huang, Lei Wang, Xianlin Pan, Jiangtao Zhang, So, Eddy
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Analog to digital conversion; Analog to digital converters; Differential measurement; Digital to analog conversion; Digital to analog converters; digital-analog conversion; Discrete Fourier transforms; Error analysis; Error detection; Fourier transforms; Nickel; Sampling; staircase waveform; Transient analysis; transient effect; Voltage measurement; Voltmeters
• ISSN: 0018-9456; 1557-9662
• DOI: 10.1109/TIM.2017.2668760

A further investigation of the new approach to overcome the transient effect of staircase waveform is reported. The piecewise sampling is reviewed, in which a normal sampling is performed but the discrete Fourier transform is only applied to partial samples while the other samples located on both sides of each step are discarded. The applicability of the analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with antialiasing filter is verified through comparison with another ADC without such filter. The parameter settings of the step number in one period, the number of samples at each step, and the frequency of the staircase waveform are investigated with the experimental results. An experimental approach is introduced to determine the location and length of the desired piecewise sampling. The available frequency of staircase waveform is limited by the settling time of digital-to-analog converter (DAC). For higher frequency measurements, the well-known multiperiod strategy previously applied in ADC is proposed to have its application extended into DAC. From another perspective, it will widen the width of the step and alleviate the need for frequent conversions. The relevant principles, procedures and experimental evidences are presented. The experimental results indicate that no significant additional measurement error is detected.