Patent ID: 7516030

Claim:
A digital oscilloscope comprising: a channel to receive a non-return-to-zero digital signal having a repeating pattern that includes a sequence of transitions, said signal having jitter; an acquisition module to acquire a plurality of digital samples of the signal over a plurality of occurrences of said repeating pattern; a processor; a first plurality of memory locations to store the acquired samples; and a second plurality of memory locations coupled to the processor to store executable instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause operations to be performed on the digital samples stored in the first plurality of memory locations to resolve the jitter into a plurality of components, said operations comprising: i) determining at least one horizontal component that corresponds to a time domain error of said jitter; ii) determining at least one vertical component that corresponds to an amplitude error of said jitter, said vertical component being distinct from said horizontal component; iii) identifying an amount of intrinsic jitter added by the channel; and iv) determining a signal jitter by quadrature subtraction of the intrinsic jitter from a measured total jitter.