Elegant construction of SSC implemented signal by AWG and organized under-sampling of wideband signal

Implementing a SSC (Spread Spectrum Clocking) solution is not an easy task for digital resources to generate and analyze. In contrast, analog resources in mixed signal testers can easily take care of such signals. The purpose of this work is to establish organized methodologies to generate and analyze the SSC implemented signal by using an AWG (Arbitrary Waveform Generator) and a waveform sampler. The first section describes the FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) & IFFT (Inverse FFT) method which provides an elegant method to construct a SSC high-speed digital data stream using an AWG. The second section describes an under-sampling method to analyze wideband signals such as a SSC high-speed digital signal by using a waveform sampler. A practical example shows a data stream of a 1.5 Gbps SATA (Serial ATA) with a 30 ms triangle profile SSC period.