Circadiant to demonstrate automated 10-GbE stressed receiver conformance test at SuperComm

27 May 2003 Allentown, PA Lightwave -- Circadiant Systems will demonstrate its Optical Standards Tester (OST), used to measure a transceiver's compliance to the 10-Gigabit Ethernet (10-GbE) IEEE 802.3ae stressed receiver conformance specification, at SuperComm next week in Atlanta.

"We are seeing the demand for OSTs grow rapidly as component and systems companies implement and expand their IEEE 802.3ae stressed receiver conformance testing," explains Paul Fitzgerald, director, sales & marketing for Circadiant Systems. "New generations of components and line cards are constantly being developed to address the growing 10-GbE market and they all need to be tested for compliance."

A 10-GbE compliant Xenpak transceiver, provided courtesy of Intel Corp., will be used as an example device under test. "There is an increasing demand for our optical transceivers that are compliant to the new 10-GbE stressed receiver conformance test and this reflects a growing 10-GbE market," adds Bob Zona, senior product marketing manager, Intel Optical Products Group, responsible for Intel's 10 Gigabit transceiver enterprise strategy.

The Circadiant Optical Standards Tester automatically makes stressed receiver conformance tests. All degradations are factory calibrated, Bit Error Rate vs. Optical Modulation Amplitude (OMA) is automatically plotted on Circadiant's Straight-line BER chart, and a simple pass or fail is indicated at the conclusion of the test.

The IEEE 802.3ae 10GE standard was adopted in June 2002 and includes the new stressed receiver conformance test specification that all manufacturers of 10-GbE receivers and systems are required to meet. The new requirement is intended to simulate worst-case conditions 10-GbE system will encounter so interoperability between 10-GbE systems is assured.

The stressed receiver conformance test defines a degraded signal and the Bit Error Rate a 10-GbE system must maintain with specified Optical Modulation Amplitude. Signal degradations include a poor extinction ratio, filtered rise and fall times, a horizontal jitter mask, and applied vertical jitter. The overall affect is to shrink the "eye" of the signal.