Serial data systems play an increasingly important role whenever volumes of data are processed or transported. Jitter is a key concern for engineers developing high speed components such as transmitters, receivers and data channels. Serial high speed communication systems need to operate within
very tight margins; with data provided extremely fast and with an exceptionally
low probability of errors. The challenge for developers is to create high speed systems at very low cost so products can be competitively marketed.

Discussing the subject matter of jitter completely would exceed the scale of this paper. Instead, it provides a general introduction to jitter, causes and methods of jitter measurements, specifically BER and the eye diagram. It will also talk about examples of standards concerning jitter-tolerance-measurements for serial high speed components and will take a closer look at the test setup for a serial high speed PCI express receiver. Click here to continue reading this application note