Optimisation and performance assessment of a digital signal-processing method for jitter measurement in PDH/SDH-based digital telecommunication networks

The paper deals with jitter measurement in telecommunication networks based on plesiochronous (PDH) or synchronous (SDH) digital hierarchies. The attention is mostly focused on PDH/SDH analysers compliant to the ITU-T recommendations, the accuracy of which seems to be unsatisfying for both designers and manufacturers. Trying to give an answer to this problem, a digital signal-processing method was already proposed by the author. It succeeded in improving jitter measurement accuracy by avoiding the use of timing recovery circuitry, always needed, on the contrary, in the aforementioned analysers.The method is here optimised with the aim both of automating jitter performance test of network elements that operate at the PDH bit rate of 140 Mbit/s and the SDH bit rate of 155 Mbit/s, and further enhancing the accuracy on jitter estimates. In particular, an innovative procedure for automatically recovering the binary information conveyed by the jittered signal under analysis is introduced, and a proper strategy for carrying out instantaneous jitter measurements at uniform time intervals is developed.After a brief outline of the old version of the method, the proposed enhancements are described in detail. Then, the performance of the optimised method is assessed through many laboratory tests on emulated signals, the results of which are given and discussed. At the end, the outcomes of real automatic tests, conducted on PDH/SDH-based equipment produced by Marconi Sud S.p.A., are also presented.