Learn about jitter specs in oscilloscopes

Jitter remains one of the most important specifications when measuring the goodness of a device. Compliance packages specify random jitter, deterministic jitter, time interval error, and total jitter. Some technologies specify such measurements as bounded uncorrelated jitter and J2/J9 jitter specification. A low jitter measurement can be the difference between having to do a redesign versus shipping the product.

When it comes to jitter an oscilloscope has become a powerful tool for measuring it. Most oscilloscopes which have the Windows operating system installed on them provide many tools to measure jitter. However, oscilloscopes are inherently noisy and have a jitter measurement floor (meaning you can't measure jitter that is lower than the jitter measurement floor of the oscilloscope).

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