Abstract
The input format of fast digital correlators, such as used in photon correlation or recurrence rate correlation, is often exceeded by input signals, if high count rates coincide with sample times of the order of several hundred nanoseconds or more. Clipping, random clipping, and scaling are well known methods to reduce such signals appropriately. We discuss these procedures with special attention to noise performance possible errors introduced into the correlogram. Generalizations from single to multi-bit correlators are presented with a thorough discussion of random preset scaling, a new process suitable for multi-bit correlation of signals with arbitrary statistics. Furthermore we describe a new additional preprocessor which offers significant decrease of quantization noise, if constant background contributions are present in the signal. Though demonstrated on optical measurements, the methods treated in this paper generally apply, whenever the format of digital data has to be reduced prior to correlation.
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