Efficient Loopback Test for Aperture Jitter in Embedded Mixed-Signal Circuits

Accurate measurement of aperture jitter for high-speed data converters is a difficult problem, since aperture jitter should be precisely separated from other jitter components as well as additive noise. This problem results in low test accuracy and high-yield loss. This paper presents a novel methodology for accurately predicting aperture jitter using a cost-effective loopback methodology. By using an efficient spectral loopback scheme, aperture jitter is precisely separated from input jitter and clock jitter as well as additive noise present in the DUT. Hardware measurement results show that this approach can be effectively used to predict the aperture jitter of a DUT, with an 89% reduction in the prediction error compared with previous approaches.