Affordable Multi-Lane BERT Solution

Affordable Multi-Lane BERT Solution

The ONLY practical solution for testing QSFP/QSFP+, CFP, CXP and Active Optical Cables.

Whether you are working with 4x10G optical transceiver, active optical cable, or devices with multiple integraded SERDES, Bit Error Rate and Jitter Tolerance testing can be overly complex and expensive. Our effective solution allows driving traffic on all lanes simultaneously while measuring BER or JTOL on all lanes in parallel to speed your device characterization. Our affordable, compact setup includes the following key features:

• Remote Mountable Heads Minimize Signal Degradation in Cables
• SIS Control Software and Resource Suite
• Multi-Channel JTOL
• Built-in De-emphasis

Remote Generator and Detector Heads

Typically BERT systems require the user to source from the generator and bring the return signal to error detector inputs mounted on the edge of the respective cards. This requires long cables which are expensive and degrade signal quality. With the PCB12500 Parallel BERT system, these functions are provided by small heads which can be remotely mounted physically close to the device under test, eliminating the need for long cables. Color coded channel ID LEDs on the remote head are indexed to the channel number, reducing the chance of connection errors when configuring systems with large lane counts.

Easy Multi-Lane BER Measurements

The parallel BER application in the Signal Integrity Studio software automatically configures multiple serial BERTs or scans a single serial BERT to measure composite BER in a multi-lane system.

Set up is easy using the Signal Integrity Studio application. For repetitive testing, setups can be stored and recalled at a later time.

The results view shows composite BER along with the performance of the individual lanes. Bar graphs give a quick indication of any lane specific problems without the need to look at the individual BER numbers.

Integrated Multi-Channel JTOL and De-emphasis

Our PCB12500 Parallel Channel BERT measures Jitter Tolerance on ALL lanes simultaneously, at a surprisingly low cost that won’t break your capital budget.

Minimize cable loss with remote pattern generator and error detector heads that can be mounted close to your device under test. 4-tap de-emphasis is integrated directly in the pattern generator head, eliminating the need (and cost) of a dedicated de-emphasis processor. Our Signal Integrity Studio software ties it all together, including a parallel jitter tolerance test with unlimited channel count.