Wavelet excited measurement of system transfer function

This article introduces a new method, which is referred to as the wavelet excitation method (WEM), for the measurement of the system transfer function. Instead of commonly used impulse or sine wave excitations, the method uses a sequential excitation by biorthogonal symmetric wavelets. The system transfer function is reconstructed from the output measurements. In the WEM the signals can be designed so that if N different excitation sequences are used and the excitation rate is f, the sampling rate of the analog-to-digital converter can be reduced to f/N. The WEM is especially advantageous in testing systems, where high quality impulse excitation cannot be applied. The WEM gave consistent results in transfer function measurements of various multistage amplifiers with the linear circuit analysis (SPICE) and the sine wave excitation methods. The WEM makes available new high speed sensor applications, where the sampling rate of the sensor may be considerably lower compared with the system bandwidth.