Windowing high-resolution analog/digital converter data (Part 1 of 2)

We are publishing a two-part article on this important topic, in pdf document format:

Part 1 (click here) is a discussion on spectral analysis that presents the need for data windowing as well as the effect of windowing functions in the time and frequency domain.
Part 2, which will be posted on February 11, 2009, presents the Cosine-Sum family of windowing functions available in WaveVision 5, the application of these windows, and an elementary discussion on the mathematics behind the calculation of performance metrics such as the SNR.

About the Author
Josh Carnes is an applications engineer with National Semiconductor's Strategic Signal Path Group, based in Ft. Collins, Colorado. He received his BSEE and MSEE degrees from Oregon State University in 2004 and 2007, respectively, with research focusing on low-voltage pipelined ADC design techniques. His interests include cellular base station subsystems, wireless communications, as well as automated testing and analysis of ADCs.

Site editor's notes:
If you intend to print this article out, for study or reference, you should use a color printer. Some of the graphs rely on color to distinguish and compare various results or sets of data.

Also please note, some of the equations did not "render" properly in the pdf file format when within the article body, due to factors we don't fully understand. If the equations look odd to you, do not worry; we have captured and rendered them individually in pdf format, and they fully readable and correct that way:

• Part 1 Equation (1): click here
• Part 1 Equation (2): click here
• Part 1 Equation (3): click here