Clock jitter generator with picoseconds resolution

As CMOS technology has scaled, supply voltage has dropped, chip power consumption has increased, and clock frequency has increased, the effects of jitter become critical and jitter budget gets tighter. Jitter can be decomposed into several components, each having specific sets of characteristics and root causes. This paper presents a short review of jitter fundamentals including a discussion of the various random and deterministic jitter components, and a method for jitter analysis and injection in computer clock signal. This method gives test engineers a deeper insight into interaction of the jitter components. The overall hardware structure of a jitter generator, which uses digital and analog techniques, based on a voltage controlled delay line is described too.