Measuring Volterra kernels

Volterra series have been in the engineering literature for some time now, and yet there have been few attempts to measure Volterra kernels. This paper discusses techniques for measuring the Volterra kernels of weakly nonlinear systems. We introduce a new quick method for measuring the second Volterra kernel which is analogous to pseudonoise testing of a linear device. To illustrate the discussion we present an experimental example, an electro-acoustic transducer. Throughout the paper we emphasize the practical aspects of kernel measurement.