The rapid growth of the Internet is fueling the deployment of high speed next generation networks, especially OC-192/STM-64 SONET/SDH, 10G Fibre Channel, and 10G Ethernet at the physical layer. Under tremendous pressure to accelerate deployment, engineers in design, manufacturing, and field organizations are using eye pattern measurements everyday to fine-tune, verify, and troubleshoot their designs. To complicate matters, deployment of new high-speed networks may require more sophisticated tools beyond optical time domain reflectometer (OTDR), optical power meter (OPM), optical spectrum analyzer (OSA), and bit error rate tester (BERT) to troubleshoot problems on-site.
Eye pattern measurements are typically performed on general purpose sampling oscilloscopes which are often a shared resource because of the expense and complexity. Engineers often waste their time waiting to get access to this shared resource despite the attempts of their managers to increase their productivity. The better approach is to equip every engineer with an affordable instrument, tailored for everyday use, that doesn’t compromise on performance nor skimp on features. Every engineer’s bench should have an eye pattern analyzer.
For supporting documentation, see Library.
