  This paper studies the impact of quantization in integrate-and-fire time
encoding machine (IF-TEM) sampler used for bandlimited (BL) and
finite-rate-of-innovation (FRI) signals. An upper bound is derived for the mean
squared error (MSE) of IF-TEM sampler and is compared against that of classical
analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) with uniform sampling and quantization. The
interplay between a signal's energy, bandwidth, and peak amplitude is used to
identify how the MSE of IF-TEM sampler with quantization is influenced by these
parameters. More precisely, the quantization step size of the IF-TEM sampler
can be reduced when the maximum frequency of a bandlimited signal or the number
of pulses of an FRI signal is increased. Leveraging this insight, specific
parameter settings are identified for which the quantized IF-TEM sampler
achieves an MSE bound that is roughly 8 dB lower than that of a classical ADC
with the same number of bits. Experimental results validate the theoretical
conclusions.
