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N8827A/B PAM-4 Analysis Software for Infiniium Oscilloscopes

Data Sheets

Keysight N8827A/B

PAM-4 Analysis Software for Infiniium Oscilloscopes

Introduction

Demand for increased network bandwidth in data centers continues to grow. Several industry groups and standards bodies are using or are actively considering multi-level signaling for such as Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM) since it enables higher data rates for a given channel bandwidth compared to common Non-Return-to-Zero (NRZ) signaling. However, the switch from NRZ to PAM-4 creates many new design and measurement challenges.

Keysight N8827A/B PAM-4 analysis software for select Infiniium Series real-time oscilloscopes is designed to accurately and quickly characterize electrical PAM-4 designs.

N8827A/B PAM Analysis Features

Comprehensive analysis of Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM-4) signals

  • Supports 4-level or PAM-4 signaling analysis
  • Eye width, eye height, eye skew
  • Level amplitude, level noise, level skew
  • Linearity measurements and more
  • Transition qualified clock recovery
  • Bit error ratio (BER) and symbol error ratio (SER) measurements
  • BER/SER per acquisition measurements to help identify burst errors
  • Unfolding of PAM-4 eye to show waveform location of BER/SER errors found

Flexible, economical

  • PAM measurements are supported by all V-Series, Z-Series, 90000A Series, 90000 X-Series, and S-Series oscilloscopes
  • PAM features are integrated directly into the Infiniium user interface (not a separate application)
  • Offline analysis available on a PC using N8900A Infiniium Offline oscilloscope analysis software plus the N8827A/B PAM analysis software

Powerful advanced analysis features

  • PAM-4 equalizers are available (CTLE, FFE/LFE) using the N5461A Infiniium Serial Data Equalization software
  • Embedding / de-embedding of channels using N5465A InfiniiSim Waveform Transformation Toolset for Infiniium Oscilloscopes
  • Jitter and amplitude analysis on IEEE JP03 patterns using the N5400A EZJIT Plus Jitter Analysis Software

Easy Measurement Setup

The Keysight N8827A/B PAM analysis software extends the ease-of-use advantages of the Infiniium oscilloscopes to the analysis of PAM-4 signals. A wizard walks you quickly through the steps required to setup measurements for a PAM encoded signal and to select methods for clock recovery and then the measurements you wish to have performed on your PAM-4 signal.

Leveraging the E2688A High-Speed Serial Data Analysis software, the N8827A/B is able to accurately set the individual threshold levels of your PAM-4 signal and render each individual eye.

PAM-4 specific clock recovery

You can choose different, software based clock methods that include first and second order phase -locked loop or constant frequency clock recovery. In addition, if you have a reference clock available, you can route that clock signal to an unused scope channel that you configure as an explicit reference clock for your PAM-4 signal. Transition qualified clock recovery delivers flexible transition-specific reference levels for patterns with low uniform density.

Perform Comprehensive Analysis of Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM-4) Signals using the N8827A/B

Accurate analysis of electrical and optical signals

Keysight’s N8827A/B PAM software performs accurate analysis on electrical PAM-4 signals using measurements integrated directly into the Infiniium user interface (no external application is required). Communication links using PAM typically operate at much higher Symbol Error Rate (SER) than traditional NRZ links, so the N8827A/B analysis algorithms have been engineered to provide robust measurements on real world waveforms including those from severely degraded signals.

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