Need to generate more than 200 Gbps PAM4 or 100 Gbps NRZ but your AWG does not support it? Here is your solution!
With SHF’s Bit Pattern Generators (BPG) and remote heads it is easy and straightforward to generate the highest possible data rates like 128 Gbps NRZ or 128 GBaud (256 Gbps) PAM4. Just connect PAM-Multiplexer (PAM-MUX) or the NRZ-Multiplexer (MUX) to your BPG and you are ready to go. The control software unifies the whole system to virtually one instrument; plug and play.
Unfortunately, some researchers who are aiming at these speeds may not have a SHF 12104 A or SHF 12105 A BPG in their laboratory, whilst a lower speed multi-channel arbitrary waveform generator (AWG) might be available as a suitable data source. This, despite its high sampling rate, cannot generate such high data rates. However, the AWG could be used to generate the lower speed NRZ data to feed the SHF remote heads.
The challenge with this ‘inter-vendor’ connection would be the clock, as most AWGs do not have the provision for a high speed reference clock the SHF remote heads require. This obstacle is now removed with the new SHF C991 A Arbitrary Clock Distribution module.
As an example, the 128 GBaud PAM4 signal generation setup with a multi-channel AWG may look like this:
Typical Setup with a SHF C991 A (devices are not to scale)
To use your AWG in such setup it must be able to synchronize on a reference clock signal in a range of 5 MHz to 3 GHz. This is given e.g. by Keysight’s M8196A 92 GSa/s AWG. In addition, the user must ensure the connection between the AWG outputs and the SHF PAM4-MUX inputs such that the data streams arrive at the same time (edge or bit synchronized).
The data sheet can be found here.
