The increasing speed of serial data transmission systems places greater importance on measuring jitter with higher accuracy. Jitter Measurements in Serial Data Signals Michael Schnecker, Product Manager LeCroy Corporation Introduction The increasing speed of serial data transmission systems places greater importance on measuring jitter with higher accuracy. Serial data standards normally require operation at an expected error rate of 10-12. While this represents only one bit error every 2.3 hours at 100 Mb/s, it translates to one error every 4 minutes at 3Gb/s. It is, therefore, important to understand the characteristics of the jitter in order to maintain system performance. Jitter is characterized by the relative variation in the location in time of the transitions of the signal level across a specific level (Figure 1). For clock signals, the relative time between threshold crossings (rising-to-rising or fal……