New Methods to Characterize Deterministic Jitter and Crosstalk-Induced Jitter From Measurements

A small amount of jitter can quickly eat up timing budgets and create timing issues. Precise characterization of deterministic and crosstalk-induced jitter can help isolate and solve issues within high-speed links. Characterizing deterministic and crosstalk-induced jitter is challenging, however, because many types of jitter work together to create the overall jitter profile. Methods are presented in this paper to characterize the deterministic and crosstalk-induced jitter from measurements of total jitter. An improved tail-fit deconvolution method is proposed for characterizing the impact of deterministic jitter in the presence of random jitter. The contribution of random jitter to total jitter is found first, and then that contribution is accounted for to find deterministic jitter. A Wiener filter deconvolution method is also presented for extracting the characteristics of crosstalk-induced jitter from measurements of total jitter made when the crosstalk sources were and were not present. The Wiener filter allows for accurate deconvolution of the measured histograms for total jitter even in the presence of the measurement noise. The proposed techniques are shown to work well both in simulations and in measurements of a high-speed link.