Lexikon Jitter specifications

Category : Lexicon

(from English: to jitter = trembling). Temporal uncertainty in the occurrence of events. See also Phase noise. Is particularly used in the transmission of digital signals, where the temporal events represent the signal edges of the transmitted signal.

Jitter, if it exceeds a certain strength, can prevent correct detection of the received signal and lead to data errors. Therefore, for a given transmission system, an upper limit is set for the allowed jitter. This upper limit depends on the data rate and the modulation method used. The higher the data rate, the less jitter is allowed.

If a clock is also recovered from the transmitted digital signal, then the quality of this clock can be affected by the jitter. This means that the recovered clock can itself be affected by jitter. An important property of a circuit for clock recovery is therefore its jitter suppression, that is, its ability to still generate a clean clock despite jitter in the received signal. This is particularly important if a low-jitter clock is required, for example for the A / D conversion or the D / A conversion.

Jitter is often specified as a time, which indicates how much the event (e.g. the signal edge) can come too early or too late.