Memory-Depth Requirements for

Introduction
If you are designing high-speed
devices that employ embedded
clocks, you need to be able to
characterize serial data streams.
You can use Agilent Technologies’
54830 and 54850 Series Infiniium
real-time oscilloscopes along with
Agilent E2688A high-speed serial
data analysis (SDA) software
for this task. Before you begin,
however, you need to ensure that
your oscilloscope has enough
memory for serial data and jitter
analysis. How much memory
you need depends on what you
were trying to accomplish. This
application note examines
some common validation
and troubleshooting tasks to
determine how much memory
you need. We will look at memory
requirements for:
• Examining low-frequency or
infrequently occurring jitter
• Examining all the
combinations of bit sequences
in a pseudorandom binary
sequence (PRBS)
• Achieving a desired
confidence level of meeting
a bit-error-rate goal