Experimental results for high-speed jitter measurement technique

A BIST method to measure jitter without external references is presented. Measured data from 0.25- m BiCMOS chips show jitter resolution about 30 to 50 ps over 8 cycles of a 1 GHz input signal. The measurement technique uses the clock signal under test to control the charging of the input capacitance of an ADC. One advantage of this design is that it does not require an external jitter-free reference clock or a voltage reference. Design improvements from architectures to circuits are discussed and the method has potentials in other timing measurement applications.