Add jitter to serial streams

With high-speed serial buses showing up everywhere and data rates constantly on the rise, jitter becomes ever more of a problem. Receivers of serial bit streams such as PCI Express Gen I & II, Serial ATA, and Fibre Channel need testing for their immunity to jitter. The J7000A series of noise sources from NoiseCom lets you add random jitter to serial data streams so you can test for jitter tolerance, clock recovery, and bit-error rate (BER).

With a controlled noise source, you can vary the amplitude of the random jitter over a range of 127 dB in 1-dB increments. An option lets you adjust jitter amplitude from 0 dB to 63 dB in 0.1-dB increments for noise bandwidth less than 2 GHz.

The series consists of six models based on bandwidth. They range from 1 MHz to 10 MHz (Model J7105A) up to 10 MHz to 5 GHz (Model J7115A). The instruments include Ethernet communications with IEEE 488 optional.

Prices: $18,000 to $23,000. NoiseCom, www.noisecom.com.