In this paper, the measurement of impedances
using analog to digital converters and ellipse fitting signal
processing algorithms is described. The robustness of this new
method makes it specially suited for low frequency impedance
measurements (up to 1 MHz) in portable DSP based
instruments. Previous methods relied on sine-fitting algorithms
to estimate the sine parameters together with the signal
frequency. These were iterative algorithms where convergence
is not assured and they can be a significant computational
burden requiring more processing capabilities in the
instrument. With ellipse fitting, the frequency is not estimated
and the algorithm is not iterative.