Effect of Limited-linear-range Amplification on Mixed Signals and Non-statistical Analysis of Quantization Noise

A formula for computing the output spectrum of a system with a bounded transfer function, when the input consists of the sum of a few (practically, up to 3) pure sinewaves and, possibly a "noise" term (i.e. a random variable with a standard deviation "smaller" than the sinewave amplitudes), is derived. This procedure is applied to a) the study of the effect of limited amplification on the processing of such signals; b) a deterministic analysis of degradation due to A/D conversion.