Understanding Jitter Measurements
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Clean signals matter. If there’s too much jitter on the signal you’re measuring, the receiver will end up decoding something completely different from what was transmitted. Imagine riding in the prototype of a self-driving car you’re developing the GPS system for the car wasn’t tested properly, and unfortunately there is a lot of jitter in the remote GPS’s transmission. This may cause the receiver in the car to misinterpret a “turn left” command as a “turn right.” Now you find yourself in the middle of a lake rather than safely heading off to your destination. And even worse, your worst nightmare becomes reality – the design doesn’t get approved.
Today’s R&D engineers have to produce cleaner, faster digital designs in less time with expanded validation requirements. A key step along the way is reducing the amount of jitter introduced to your design by understanding it, measuring it properly, and finding the source. The less jitter present, the more likely your design will be stable and pass to the next round in the development cycle.
Fully understanding jitter is critical for creating a stable design. Let’s look at what jitter is, why you should care about it, and how to analyze it.