DesignCon 2007: A Comparison of Methods for Estimating Total Jitter Concerning Precision, Accuracy and Robustness

DesignCon 2007: A Comparison of Methods for Estimating Total Jitter Concerning Precision, Accuracy and Robustness
DesignCon 2007




A Comparison of Methods for
Estimating Total Jitter
Concerning Precision, Accuracy
and Robustness


Martin Miller Ph.D., Chief Scientist, LeCroy Corporation
marty.miller@lecroy.com

Michael Schnecker, Product Specialist, LeCroy Corporation
michael.schnecker@lecroy.com
Abstract

Oscilloscopes have been used extensively to analyze the jitter performance of serial data
links providing estimates (measurements) of total jitter as well as its “random” and
“deterministic” parts. Higher speed serial data signals containing jitter from sources such
as crosstalk and multi-Gaussian random noise can cause traditional oscilloscope-based
methods to greatly over or under estimate the total jitter. This paper presents a
comparison of several common methods for estimating total jitter u