How to measure the jitter in deterministic comm protocols?

[Ben]

Before I spend to much time re-inventing the wheel, I would like to hear your thoughts on how to measure the jitter in various comm protocols.

To start, I'll get a couple of high end PXI Chassis and code in RT.

I'll also get the best timer boards avaiable for both chasis.

What I want to be able to do is to characterize the determinism of various comm methods.

Specificly, I want to measure the "jitter" for each comm method under a variety of loads.

The high end comm schemes (Reflective memory, Fibre Channel ) should have jitter on the order of microseconds or possilble nanoseconds.

Out of the box ethernet on a dedicated network may be on the order of seconds.

So.....

If you have any ideas solutions or "show-stoppers" you would like to share, please feel frre to reply.

I thank you for reading this post!

Ben 

[Ben]

Bump to top.

Ben

[unclebump]

Way out of my league on this one.

[Ben]

"Way out of my league on this one. "

"A wise man knows his limits." (But what does that say about me taking on this projects ).

Ben

[Dennis_Knutson]

Ben,

I've had to do some jitter tests but I've always used some dedicated (and very pricey) protocol analysers for GigE and T1. The people that used to do this on a regular basis are no longer here. Their replacements are half a globe away but I'll try and see if I can get information.

Dennis

[Ben]

Dennis,

I appreciate any help you can provide. You don't happen to have any manufactuers and models number laying around do you?

Maybe the tech manuals can help.

My customer wants me to build a generic fixture that he can use on any type of widget that he wants (within reasonable limits of course).

I still haven't written the specification for this project yet but in preperation for doing so, I want to make sure I don't specify something I can not do (I hat it when I do that).

Ben

[Dennis_Knutson]

What we use for T1 jitter testing is the Fireberd 6000 which is now sold by JDSU. We also have an ANT-20 from JDSU. I think it also can do jitter testing but I have not used it. The Ethernet (10/100)  testing is done by a SmartBits by Spirent. We just got a new box from Spirent for GigE. I think it's called the SmartTest Center or something like that.

I did a google of 'Jitter Testing'. It looks like there are some interesting articles besides the links from the test equipment vendors (Agilent, Anritsu, etc.).