A method of generating a randomized benchmarking protocol includes providing a randomly generated plurality of Hadamard gates; applying the Hadamard gates to a plurality of qubits; and generating randomly a plurality of Hadamard-free Clifford circuits. Each of the plurality of Hadamard-free Clifford circuits is generated by at least randomly generating a uniformly distributed phase (P) gate, and randomly generating a uniformly distributed linear Boolean invertible matrix of conditional NOT (CNOT) gate, and combining the P and CNOT gates to form each of the plurality of Hadamard-free Clifford circuits. The method also includes combining each of the plurality of Hadamard-free Clifford circuits with corresponding each of the plurality of Hadamard gates to form a sequence of alternating Hadamard-free Clifford-Hadamard pairs circuit to form the randomized benchmarking protocol; and measuring noise in a quantum mechanical processor using the randomized benchmarking protocol.