Quantifying Crosstalk Induced Jitter in Multi-lane Serial Data Systems (2009)

Multi-lane serial data links are susceptible to crosstalk from adjacent lanes as well as external aggressors. The resulting interference increases the jitter and noise on the victim lanes and can ultimately cause bit errors. While techniques such as network analysis using either TDR or VNA can measure the coupling between lanes, they cannot directly measure the impact of crosstalk on timing jitter for a given lane. This paper presents techniques that can be used to accurately measure the amount of jitter contributed by crosstalk independent of other jitter sources. Measurements on multi-lane scenarios for real-world and laboratory induced crosstalk will be presented as examples of this analysis. Author(s) Biography Martin T Miller, PhD, chief scientist at LeCroy Corp, has been a hands-on engineer and designer at the company for 30 years. His doctorate is from the University of Rochester (Rochester, NY) in high-energy physics. A native of Baltimore, Miller has contributed analog, digital, and software designs, during the last 16 years he has focused on measurement-and-display software capabilities for LeCroy scopes. He holds several US patents and has participated in task groups concerning jitter measurements. Michael Schnecker holds an MSEE from the Georgia Institute of Technology and has 20 years of experience in the test and measurement industry. Mr. Schnecker specializes in signal integrity measurements including jitter and has been key in specifying and deploying the LeCroy SDA series instruments. Summary A real world consequence of crosstalk is an increase of Rj and Dj. Depending upon the nature of traffic on adjacent lanes the effects can be dramatically different. Conventional jitter analysis techniques employing digital oscilloscopes and other types of instruments provide a detailed breakdown of jitter components including periodic, data dependent and random jitter sources (Pj, DDj and Rj). At the same time, crosstalk is fundamentally an amplitude coupling between signal lanes and causes a correlated and often higher level component of amplitude distortion. There are generally two types of crosstalk present in any given serial data system; uncorrelated or “alien” crosstalk and correlated crosstalk. The latter tends to appear in the form of data dependent jitter and random jitter while the former generally comes in the form of periodic jitter. An additional feature of crosstalk is that it directly impacts the amplitude of the signal. This impact can be seen as eye closure in the BER contour and as periodic variation in the amplitude of the signal. Examining the periodic amplitude variations helps to identify those components of the periodic jitter are due to uncorrelated crosstalk. The measurement of random jitter in cases where crosstalk is present is a particularly difficult task. Depending on the type of interfering signal, crosstalk can result in a significant increase in the random jitter which is not generally measured accurately by most jitter measurement models. In particular, the presence of correlated crosstalk from delayed aggressors can contribute to random jitter at a very low statistical weight but with a high standard deviation. In these cases, examining several jitter measurement models can help reveal the true nature of the total jitter. The separation of random and deterministic jitter is commonly expressed as the “DualDirac” jitter model. Dual-Dirac models the jitter PDF as a single Gaussian convolved with a pair of Dirac delta functions each with a weight of 1⁄2 and separated by the deterministic jitter. Other models are possible and can offer benefits in crosstalk scenarios. These alternate models include Dual Gaussian in which two separate Gaussians, each with its own standard deviation and a weight of 1⁄2 and with mean values separated by the deterministic jitter are used to model the jitter PDF. A third method models the jitter as 2 Gaussians each with its own weight and standard deviation that are separated by the deterministic jitter. The three models allow increasing degrees of freedom for fitting the measured TIE and provide increasingly more accurate estimation of the jitter PDF and BER performance. Three sets of experimental results will show the impact of the jitter components caused by specific types of crosstalk. The sources will be set up as a signal under test and aggressor in a structure that induces crosstalk. The first test will use simple clock-like patterns in the victim and aggressor and will establish the relationship between crosstalk and jitter. The second experiment will have a clock-like victim and an aggressor with a random pattern and the the final experiment will have both victim and aggressor with random patterns. In each of the experiments, the jitter results measured using two models will be correlated with a predicted value based on the measured peak to peak induced crosstalk voltage. Total jitter and jitter breakdown Timing jitter, by nature is a random process because it contains components that are produced by thermal noise. The most basic way of viewing jitter has been to use a random Gaussian noise model which can be analyzed in terms of its standard deviation. This simple model has been used to predict the long term error performance of serial data links in many applications including telecommunications standards such as SONET/SDH. As high speed serial data has migrated into lower-cost platforms such as PCs, however, the simple Gaussian model for jitter has become inadequate. This is mainly because the lower cost links can have more sources of so-called deterministic jitter which is not well modeled with a simple Gaussian. The Dual-Dirac jitter model The Fibrechannel committee first developed a more appropriate model for jitter in the MJSQ document [1]. This document introduced a statistical model that better represents real-world jitter by including both random and deterministic jitter. The model, known as the Dual-Dirac jitter model includes a Gaussian probability density function convolved with two Dirac delta functions which are separated by an amount proportional to the deterministic jitter. The model is shown in figure 1. Like the simple Gaussian model, Dual-Dirac seeks to predict the long term error performance of a serial data link and because it includes a deterministic component, it is much more accurate. Increased accuracy is important because the performance margins have become much smaller as the transfer rates of serial data links have increased.