Numerical Conditional Probability Density Function and Its Application in Jitter Analysis

Jitter is a critical factor in the performance of high-speed I/O links. Jitter can be modeled as a discrete-time random process. Both the probability density function (PDF) and the spectral characteristics of jitter are important for evaluating its impact on channel performance. The concept of numerical conditional PDF and a new statistical method called FastBER are proposed in this paper to accurately and efficiently perform bit-error-rate (BER) analysis while taking into account both the PDF and the spectral characteristics of an arbitrary jitter sequence for arbitrarily low BER levels. The proposed method achieves the accuracy and flexibility of a transient approach with the high efficiency of a statistical approach.