How to Validate an Optical Transceiver in an MRI System

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Optical Transceiver Test Solution
+ Optical Transceiver Test Solution
Optical Transceiver Test Solution
+ Optical Transceiver Test Solution

Ensuring optimal optical transceiver performance in an MRI system with an oscilloscope and J-BERT

Validating optical transceiver performance in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems requires testing the components to ensure effective functionality in high magnetic strength environments. With MRI systems adopting higher magnetic fields, system designers have started replacing heavily shielded copper cables with fiber optics to transfer data from the MRI system to the control room. For receiver sensitivity testing, MRI engineers measure the bit error rate (BER) at different power levels to determine the minimum power required for acceptable performance. They also introduce signal degradation factors such as poor extinction ratios, jitter, and inter-symbol interference (ISI). The transceiver must maintain acceptable performance levels despite these stresses.

Transmitter eye-mask testing is important to evaluate transmitted signal quality against a predefined mask. The transceiver performance test requires a sampling oscilloscope and a jitter bit error ratio tester (BERT). The oscilloscope can capture and analyze optical waveforms, generate eye diagrams to visually inspect signal integrity and identify jitter and noise that affect receiver sensitivity. In addition, it can perform eye-mask tests to verify the transmitted signal. A jitter BERT is used to measure the quality of a digital signal transmission. The tester calculates the number of errors in the received data to ensure that the fiber optic cables used in MRI systems can handle the high data rates required without introducing significant errors.

Optical transceiver test solution

Validating the transceiver performance of an MRI system requires a sampling oscilloscope and a jitter BERT.  Keysight DCA-M N1092A supports up to 10 GHz optical bandwidth, and engineers can configure it to perform optical transmitter compliance tests at a variety of standard data rates up to 11.3 Gb/s. The oscilloscope has high data-rate analysis accuracy, displaying less than 200 fs jitter. Keysight J-BERT M8020A BERT supports optical transceiver data transfer rates over 10 Gbps. The unit verifies receiver compliance of fiber channel and cables complete with all test capabilities, jitter sources, common and differential mode interference, and de-emphasis to emulate the transmit (TX) of the device under test. The current data transmission need for the fiber optic links to the MRI control room is at 2 Gbps. This test solution is ready to support the next generation MRI system optical transmission of 10Gbps. 
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