Agilent Introduces Clock Recovery Instrument

February 28, 2012. Agilent Technologies Inc. has introduced a new family of instrumentation-grade clock recovery products for optical and electrical testing of high-speed digital communications components and systems.

Bit-error-ratio testers and oscilloscopes require a clock signal to synchronize the measurement system to the incoming data stream. When the necessary synchronous clock is not available, a common solution is to derive the clock from the data being measured. Agilent’s three new clock-recovery products use this technique to cover an extensive range of data rates and technologies.

The Agilent N4877A clock recovery system provides clock extraction for electrical signals for any rate from 50 Mb/s to 32 Gb/s. The Agilent N1070A combines the N4877A with the N1075A optical coupler/converter to achieve optical clock recovery on multimode signals to 16 Gb/s and single-mode signals to 32 Gb/s. The new clock-recovery products offer residual jitter performance as low as 100 fs rms, which increases margin in jitter tests and minimizes degradation of results by the test system.

Transceivers operating at 25 to 30 Gb/s will be key components of next-generation communications systems, including multilane devices for 100-Gb/s systems. Many test standards (for example, IEEE 802.3 Ethernet and Fibre Channel) require designers to use clock recovery for test system synchronization. To achieve consistent results, key parameters describing the jitter transfer and observed jitter transfer characteristics of the clock recovery system are often specified. Agilent’s new clock recovery products provide this capability with an intuitive user interface, allowing easy adjustment of loop peaking and loop bandwidth. The N4877A also provides data demultiplexing to extend the range of bit-error-ratio test systems into the 30-Gb/s range.

“Instrumentation-grade clock recovery will be one of the essential tools for the design of next-generation, high-speed digital communications systems and components,” said Juergen Beck, general manager of Agilent’s digital and photonic test division. “These new solutions will operate at the new industry-standard rates, but also provide significant margin above those rates, giving engineers important flexibility in their design and test strategies.”

Agilent will unveil the instrumentation-grade clock recovery products at OFC/NFOEC 2012 in Los Angeles, March 6-8.

N4877 versions for electrical signals range from $32,000 (50 Mb/s to 16.5 Gb/s) to $50,000 (50 Mb/s to 32 Gb/s). N1070A versions (combining the N4877A with the N1075A optical coupler/converter) cost from $46,000 to $64,000. The N1075A optical coupler/converter without the clock-recovery instrument costs $18,000; it offers multimode and single-mode operation to 16.5 Gb/s and single-mode operation to 32 Gb/s.

Agilent Technologies, www.agilent.com/find/cdr.

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