The industry's first clock recovery module with the necessary accuracy for high-speed waveform analysis at any data rate has been developed by Agilent Technologies Inc.

The firm says the unit's unique, continuously adjustable loop bandwidth from 30kHz to 6MHz makes the 83496A optical-electrical module suitable for jitter compliance tests across a wide range of industry standards.

A plug-in for the firm's 86100C Infiniium digital communications analyzer (DCA-J), the module performs clock extraction for waveform analysis with continuous, unbanded tuning from 50Mb/s to 13.5Gb/s, ultra-low residual jitter and Golden PLL (phase locked loop) operation.

Now optical and electrical component and system designers in high-speed digital communications can achieve higher measurement accuracy and increased performance margins in industry-standard compliance testing, Agilent says, and avoid obscuring true product performance caused by inadequate instrumentation.

The module is not only a tool to extract a timing reference, but an key element in compliant test systems. With the widest range of telecom and datacom transmission rates and lowest intrinsic jitter in the industry, the 83496A will provide the necessary test-system flexibility as new rates emerge, Agilent says.

"The Agilent 83496A represents a significant technology breakthrough in test instrumentation," Siegfried Gross, Agilent vice president and general manager of the Digital Verification Solutions Division, says. "Increased eye mask and jitter measurement accuracy is critically important to designers and manufacturers of high-speed transmission devices."

The module can function as a Golden PLL by setting the loop bandwidth to the exact value required for any data rate within its operating range, making it a key component for standards-compliant jitter tests. Its ultra-low jitter performance removes the limitations of traditional test equipment, allowing designers to measure the true jitter of devices.

Specifications include less than 300-femtoseconds rms of jitter, resulting in negligible residual jitter of the output clock and allowing precise measurements of very low levels of signal jitter.