The Impact of Clock Recovery on Your Serial Data Measurements

Speaker: Steve Sekel, Director of Product Management

Original Broadcast by EDN • April 2008

Clock Recovery is an important component in serial data measurements, whether evaluating the performance of transmitters, receivers or systems. The performance of clock recovery has a direct impact on accuracy and repeatability of these measurements. While engineers commonly spend considerable time trying to achieve jitter measurements which correlate, few consider the contribution of clock recovery performance.

This seminar fills this knowledge gap, providing the engineer with the information needed to improve measurement integrity. It covers:

How clock recovery instruments are applied in the test systems, and the parameters that affect jitter measurements.
How PLL bandwidth and peaking alter the jitter transfer function through the system, and how edge density affects the calibration of these.
The differences between hardware and software PLL implementation.
The inaccuracies resulting from trigger latency and unmatched data and clock path delay.

Take a big step toward higher accuracy jitter measurements by increasing your understanding of this key aspect of your measurement system.