Quantification of frame jitter in data acquisition systems

The paper develops an algorithm for the estimation of the standard deviation of the frame jitter associated with digital oscilloscopes and other data capture equipment. Frame jitter is considered as a special case of the more general timing jitter expressed in the frequency domain. An approximation is used that maps the standard deviation σ_f of the time domain jitter disturbance into the quadrature component of the recorded signal consisting of required information plus noise. σ_f is estimated from the statistical moments of the phase and quadrature components of the disturbed signal in a manner that minimizes the influence of additive noise on the estimation. The method has been demonstrated on an ultrasonic pulse-echo spectrometer that features relatively narrow bandwidth, low time domain resolution and significant additive noise. The obtained estimate of the standard deviation of the frame jitter was about four times lower than the sampling interval.