New technology for performing optical communications test

Test & Measurement

8 November 2000 Test & Measurement

Tektronix has introduced digital phase analysis (DPA) into its OTS9000 family of optical test systems. The company says this is an innovative, best-in-market jitter and synchronisation testing technology for telecommunications networks. This enables manufacturers and network operators to meet and perform the 10 Gbps test requirements needed to address the ever expanding global communications infrastructure.

Jitter is the rapid phase shift of digital pulses over the transmission medium (in this case fibre-optic cable). Excessive jitter causes errors when the data is recovered. Synchronisation is the co-ordination of communi- cation equipment by clock signals. When the phase shift between clock signals is excessive, service quality degrades and data is lost. For consumers, this means a dropped call or poor quality of service. With the development of faster and more complex telecommunications networks, management of jitter and synchronisation is becoming increasingly critical.

Jitter testing at 10 Gbps

According to the company, DPA technology enables jitter and synchronisation analysis critical to equipment manufacturers and network operators because it allows them to perform 10 Gbps jitter testing on data - not just on clocks - with low intrinsic noise, high jitter accuracy, wide dynamic range, flexible jitter bandwidths and fast settling. Jitter testing has become a crucial part of 10 Gbps testing because at this high data rate, bits are spaced more closely together.

The OTS9000 series of products, announced earlier this year, is the first optical test system designed to test dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM) systems at 10 Gbps. Based on a modular, common-platform concept, the OTS9000 platform and the field-transportable OTS9010 platform, share the same modules and the same, Windows-based, graphical user interface (GUI). Tektronix calims that these platforms, along with the 10 Gbps transmission test module, decrease test time, manufacturing and deployment costs and time-to-market by providing user-configurable multichannel and accelerated bit error rate testing capabilities for DWDM applications. Its 10 Gbps module allows selection of SONET and SDH through the GUI, provides OC192c/STM64c payloads and a variety of other payload structures

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New technology for performing optical communications test

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