BitifEye

Many choices go into the design of a reference transmitter for stressed receiver testing, and every choice can lead to unintended complications when it’s time to calibrate the stressed signal. The pattern generator component of advanced BERTs come equipped with internal noise sources like sinusoidal jitter and interference, random jitter and noise; multi-channel generators can even apply genuine crosstalk.

BitifEye introduces the signal impairments required for receiver testing in the emerging automotive standards like ASA, MIPI's A-PHY, Automotive Ethernet, etc. From "automotive cable crosstalk" to "car noise" to "fast transient pulses," the standards specify different sources of noise in different ways, some as in the form of time evolutions, others as spectra; this article focuses on techniques for generating and calibrating each noise source. In the process, they describe advanced de-embedding techniques and address test equipment limitations.

Automotive applications present new challenges to high-speed serial technology. Asymmetric, multi-gigabit signaling between sensors, processors, and displays in the unique noise environments of both electric and internal combustion engine vehicles create new problems for signal and power integrity engineers. This paper introduces the signal impairments required for receiver testing in the emerging automotive standards like ASA, MIPI's A-PHY, Automotive Ethernet, and more. Standards specify different sources of noise in different ways, some in the form of time evolutions, others as spectra. This paper focuses on techniques for generating and calibrating each noise source while describing advanced de-embedding techniques and addressing test equipment limitations.

In this paper, we illustrate the fundamentals of TxFFE and the subtleties of using TxFFE in an equalization scheme that includes both linear and nonlinear equalization at the receiver.