Agilent J-Bert Measurement Equipment

In the past I have written about a BERTScope from Synthesys Research .  This measurement equipment combines a bit-error-rate tester with precise voltage and timing sampling circuitry to allow the device to scan a received signal to measure the eye diagram.  Synthesys was the only such device for quite a long time, however I recently saw an announcement from Agilent of a new similar piece of equipment called the J-BERT.  Here are some basic specs for the new Agilent device:

• N4903B J-BERT
• Data rate options up to 7 Gbps or 12.5 Gbps
• Built in clock recovery (BERTScope requires external CDR module)
• BER testing
• Eye diagram measurement
• Jitter measurement with RJ/DJ separation

I haven't had a chance to compare the performance, features, and price of this device with the BERTScope yet.  It definately seems like it could be a good alternative.

I did find one application note from Agilent that describes how this type of BERT scanning measurement equipment works titled "Eye Characterization on Idle and Framed Data Traffic: the Bit Recovery Mode".  Perhaps more to come on this in a future article.