The myth of data acquisition rate

• Data acquisition rate has no influence on band broadening and hence resolution.
• Software packages often contain undocumented features.
• Undisclosed digital filtering is often coupled with data acquisition.

With the need for high-frequency data acquisition, the influence of the data acquisition rate on the quality of the digitized signal is often discussed and also misinterpreted. In this study we show that undersampling of the signal, i.e. low data acquisition rate will not cause band broadening. Users of modern instrumentation and authors are frequently misled by hidden features of the data handling software they use. Very often users are unaware of the noise filtering algorithms that run parallel with data acquisition and that lack of information misleads them. We also demonstrate that undersampled signals can be restored by a proper trigonometric interpolation.

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