Traceable waveform calibration with a covariance-based uncertainty analysis

Abstract

We describe a method for calibrating the voltage that a step-like pulse generator produces at a load at every time point in themeasured waveform. The calibration includes an equivalent-circuit model of the generator that can be used to determine how the generator behaves when it is connected to arbitrary loads. The generator is calibrated with an equivalent-time sampling oscilloscope and is traceable to fundamental physics via the electro-optic sampling system at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The calibration includes a covariance-based uncertainty analysis that provides the uncertainty at each time in the waveform vector and the correlations between the uncertainties at the different times. From the calibrated waveform vector and its covariance matrix, we calculate pulse parameters and their uncertainties. We compare our method with a more traditional parameter-based uncertainty analysis.