Direct Measurement of Fast Transients by Using Boot-strapped Waveform Averaging

TL;DR

This paper introduces a digital cavity-based method called boot-strapped waveform averaging to enhance sampling rate and signal quality, demonstrated by measuring fluorescence lifetime of rhodamine 6G with high accuracy.

Contribution

It presents a novel digital technique for coherent sampling that improves measurement of fast transients in signals.

Findings

Effective increase in sampling rate and SNR for repetitive signals

Accurate measurement of fluorescence lifetime (4.4±0.1 ns)

Method validated with experimental data from rhodamine 6G

Abstract

An approximation to coherent sampling, also known as boot-strapped waveform averaging, is presented. The method uses digital cavities to determine the condition for coherent sampling. It can be used to increase the effective sampling rate of a repetitive signal and the signal to noise ratio simultaneously. The method is demonstrated by using it to directly measure the fluorescence lifetime from rhodamine 6G by digitizing the signal from a fast avalanche photodiode. The obtained lifetime of 4.4+-0.1 ns is in agreement with the known values.