The paper describes a novel method for simple estimation of jitter contained in a received digital signal. The main objective of our research was to enable a non-invasive measurement of data link properties during a regular data transmission. To evaluate the signal quality we estimate amount of jitter contained in the received signal by utilizing internal signals of a data recovery circuit. The method is a pure digital algorithm suitable for implementation in any digital integrated circuit (ASIC or FPGA). It is based on a blind-oversampling data recovery circuit which is used in some receivers instead of a traditional PLL-based clock and data recovery (CDR) circuit. Combination of the described jitter measurement block and the data recovery block forms a very efficient input part of the digital receiver. In such configuration it is able to simultaneously perform both data communication (data recovery) and signal quality estimation (jitter measurement). The jitter measurement portion of the receiver requires no special connection of the received data signal. Thus the measured signal is not influenced by the measurement circuitry at all. To verify the method we performed a measurement on a laboratory free-space optics link. Results of the measurement are satisfactory and can be used for on-line channel analysis.
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