User guide

Understanding the Serial BERT
The Serial BERT, also referred to as a Bit Error Ratio Tester (BERT), is a powerful
instrument that enables you to analyze systems and components in the
telecommunication and enterprise communication industries. It is an essential tool
for designing and troubleshooting communications systems, high-speed integrated
circuits (ICs), and photonic components. Its intuitive operation and leading edge
performance will help you quickly verify error performance.
The Serial BERT comes with advanced jitter generation capabilities for jitter
tolerance testing (J-BERT). The instrument provides:
• Excellent waveform performance
• Outstanding rise times and jitter performance
• A choice of logic family interfaces
• Easy object-oriented programming with the IVI-COM interface
• Remote commands similar to HP/Agilent 71603B
• A variety of ways in which to accumulate and view test results
• A collection of example patterns
• Convenient online documentation
• Automatic setup of optimum sampling point
• A variety of powerful advanced analysis tools
• Special support for jitter analysis and characterization
Which Features are Available?
The Serial BERT is available with different options. They differ in the range of
provided bit rates and in the available features.
Depending on the options you bought or upgrated, you can have the following
installed:
• C07
Bit rate range: 150 Mbit/s to 7 Gbit/s pattern generator and error detector with
built-in clock data recovery (CDR)
• C13
Bit rate range: 150 Mbit/s to 12.5 Gbit/s pattern generator and error detector
with built-in CDR
• A01, U01
Bit Recovery Mode (measures BER without expecting a particular pattern)
• J10
1 Planning the Test
14 Agilent J-BERT N4903B High-Performance Serial BERT