Analysing the components of a single oscilloscope
New options introduced for R&S RTO and R&S RTP oscilloscopes from Rohde & Schwarz help development engineers gain a deeper understanding of every jitter component of their transmission interfaces. Engineers can now separate jitter into random and deterministic jitter and view the results flexibly for effective debugging. Rohde & Schwarz uses parametric signal model separation algorithms for accurate measurements as well as additional supplementary results.
Rohde & Schwarz has developed an innovative and powerful method for analysing the individual components of jitter, giving circuit designers unprecedented insights that are invaluable for debugging high-speed signals.
As data rates increase and voltage swing decreases, jitter in digital interfaces takes up a large percentage of the signal interval and is a potential source of faults. Engineers therefore increasingly need tools that can accurately measure signal jitter, including separating it into its individual jitter components. The new R&S RTO-/ RTP-K133 advanced jitter analysis option introduces an analysis method to separate out the individual jitter components, such as random jitter and deterministic jitter (e.g. data-dependent jitter and periodic jitter). This method is based on a parametric signal model that fully characterises the transmission link under test.
The central advantage of this approach from Rohde & Schwarz is that its jitter model includes the complete waveform characterisation of the signal under test, whereas, in contrast, conventional methods reduce the data to a set of time-interval error measurements. As a result, even for relatively short signal sequences, the new approach can yield consistent measurements, as well as previously unavailable information such as step response, or the difference between vertical and horizontal periodic jitter. Engineers can benefit from deep details of jitter performance, including synthetic eye diagrams, histograms of all individual jitter components, spectral and peak views of periodic jitter, and bathtub plots for estimating BER.
Josef Wolf, senior vice president and head of the oscilloscope division at Rohde & Schwarz, said that the R&S RTO-/ RTP-K133 option will be well received by the market. He mentioned, "We are very proud to bring this advanced approach to the market, which is the first truly improved new approach to oscilloscope jitter separation in almost two decades. With the new advanced jitter component, we can help engineers get more deep details of their signal jitter characteristics than ever before."
This new jitter separation component extends signal integrity debugging capabilities for engineers, complementing the industry's only integrated time-domain reflection (TDR)/time-domain transmission (TDT) measurements, as well as real-time de-embedding capabilities in a single oscilloscope.
