Jitter testing gives ITU-T the shakes

摘要

A certain amount of noise or jitter is in-herent in any digital transmission system, but such impairments become increasingly problematic at higher bit rates. At 10 Gbits/sec, every piece of equipment in the network must be accurately measured, but what happens when the jitter tester itself is not accurate? How do you verify the accuracy of the jitter tester? Agilent Technologies (Palo Alto, CA) and Anritsu (Richardson, TX) say they have solved the problem—through completely different means. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU-T) now finds itself with the unenviable task of deciding which test equipment giant is right if it can't reconcile the two methodologies.