Abstract: A physical-layer tester for testing a high-speed serial link between a mission-environment transmitter and a mission-environment receiver. The tester includes a data path and a measurement path. The data path allows a data signal transmitted from the mission-environment transmitter to be passed through the tester to the mission-environment receiver. The measurement path includes circuitry for use in analyzing characteristics of the high-speed serial data traffic on the high-speed serial link. The tester is placed in the high-speed serial link and allows the link to be tested while live, mission-environment data is present on the link. Methods for implementing in-link testing are also disclosed.

Abstract: A multi-speed jittered signal generator (216, 400) that generates a full-speed jittered signal (404) by scaling a low-speed jittered signal (420) using a frequency scaler (428). The low-speed jittered signal is created by injecting a modulation signal (416) into a reference signal (412) using a jitter injector (432). Injecting jitter into a low-speed reference signal allows the full-speed jittered signal to be of higher quality than conventional jitter signals created by injecting jitter information into a full-speed reference signal. The multi-speed jittered signal generator may be used as part of a testing system (208) for testing various circuitry, such as high-speed serializer/deserializer circuitry (220).

Abstract: A module (236, 236?) containing an integrated testing system (108) that includes one or more measurement engines (200, 202) tightly coupled with a compute engine (208). The one or more measurement engines include at least one stimulus instrument (212) for exciting circuitry of a device-under-test (104) with one or more stimulus signals, and at least one measurement instrument (216) that measures the response of the device-under-test to the stimulus signal(s) and generates measurement data. The compute engine includes computation logic circuitry (800) for determining whether or not the circuitry aboard the device-under-test passes or fails. The integrated testing system further includes a communications engine (204) providing two-way communications between the integrated testing system automated testing equipment (116) and/or a dedicated user interface (140) residing on a host computer (136).