How Standards on Discontinuous Disturbances Jeopardise Measurement Repeatability

Civilian standards define the characteristics and performance of disturbance analysers. Unfortunately, these standards include some contradictory prescriptions and vague indications. As a result, todays’ disturbance analysers implement very different algorithms. While the disturbance analysers give homogenous results in the specific tests prescribed in the standard, the results of their disturbance measurements may be quite heterogeneous as soon as the application scenario widens, such as in a real-world measurement. In this paper, we discuss the disturbance measurement method introduced in latest editions of civilian standards as well as in recent publications, and make evidence of problems that arise when applying the new methodology, validating our claims with lab experiments and real-world disturbance measurements.