Affordable Analysis for Next-Generation High Performance Designs

摘要

Growing demand for high performance RF, microwave and serial communication devices (SERDES) has highlighted the need for good signal integrity (SI) in modern designs. Engineers need to accurately characterize timing, jitter and noise performance to determine the operating envelope of their designs and guarantee reliable operation once deployed. Validating SI has traditionally been a specialist task requiring high-end oscilloscopes that can be both expensive and bulky. Realtime digital oscilloscopes, above 10 GHz, are suited to debug and troubleshoot tasks, and can be used to check signal integrity. However, they tend to be expensive and suffer from drawbacks - including limited 8-bit ADC resolution, reduced to 6 bits or less at high frequencies - and relatively high intrinsic jitter floor.