An Accurate and Cost-Effective Jitter Measurement Technique Using a Single Test Frequency

Abstract

An accurate and cost-effective jitter measurement technique is proposed. The new technique uses only a single test with a high frequency input sine wave. Eliminating the need for a 2nd low frequency test, which is required in the conventional dual-frequency jitter test, provides significantly savings in both hardware and data acquisition time. The new technique is computationally efficient since it requires only one FFT together with some simple time domain computation. Furthermore, there are no nonlinear operations involved, hence avoiding errors inherently associated with such operations. Theoretical analysis, extensive simulation results and experimental results show that the proposed technique is cost-effective and achieves comparable test accuracy to that achieved by the conventional dual-frequency test. The new technique is reliable and robust to both harmonic and non-harmonic distortions. The algorithmic simplicity and the relaxed hardware requirement make the new technique potentially suited for built-in self test.