A method and device for high speed broadband testing of systems and substances using a binary, spectrally sparse sequence (SSS) as a periodic excitation waveform. The sequences with controllable frequency and magnitude spectra content are designed by component manipulation method or by edge manipulation method. The excitation waveform is typically pre-calculated, and kept in waveform memory, from where it is shifted out into digital to physical quantity converter (DQC). The sparse spectrum of the SSS makes it easy to create plenty of uncorrelated frequency sets with adjacent, but sufficiently different frequencies to form multi-path test systems, where all the paths can be measured simultaneously. The response of the sample under test (SUT) is sampled and the complex transfer function is calculated directly or indirectly via Impulse Response by Discrete Fourier Transform technique and its derivatives. The sequence bit interval and sampling interval have a predetermined ratio.
