March 26, 2015 - Teledyne LeCroy Korea (CEO Woonjae Lee, teledynelecroy.co.kr) today announced the release of the industry's first real-time oscilloscope PAM4 analysis tool, PAM4 Signal Analysis Software. This new analysis toolset performs essential eye diagram, jitter, and noise measurements for all three open eyes of a PAM4 signal. It is an essential tool for engineers designing next-generation electrical and optical links that aim to more than double the data rates enabled by PAM4 signaling.

PAM4 uses a four-level signal to encode two bits of information per symbol instead of one. This doubles the number of levels compared to NRZ signaling, doubling the signal complexity. A PAM4 eye diagram has three open eyes and twelve transitions, compared to NRZ's two. Engineers must understand how transmitters, channels, and links affect PAM4 eye quality, quantifying timing jitter, noise, and eye closure as measured by the Bit Error Ratio (BER).

Because existing oscilloscope-based serial data analysis tools are designed to handle NRZ signals, new measurement tools and techniques had to be developed for 4-level signaling analysis. The new PAM4 signal analysis software is specifically designed to measure 4-level signaling, performing eye, jitter, and noise measurements on each of the three eye openings of a PAM4 signal. Total Jitter and Noise: Jitter and noise are separated into random and deterministic components for detailed analysis. In addition to quantifying jitter, noise, eye height, and eye width, the software visualizes and displays measurements through a rich set of histograms, tracks, spectra, and bathtub curves, helping users understand the root causes of jitter.

The PAM4 package is the latest in Teledyne LeCroy's long history of innovation in jitter and timing measurements on complex signals. Teledyne LeCroy was the first company to introduce a dedicated jitter analysis package and serial data analyzer for serial data signals, and now offers the SDA III-CompleteLinQ, its third-generation serial data analyzer. This package is the only tool capable of comparing eye, jitter, and noise measurements from up to four lanes simultaneously. The PAM4 Analysis Package builds on this experience with a dedicated tool for PAM4 signal analysis.