Ransom Stephens, Writer, Physicist, Public Speaker, Ransom’s Notes
Marcus Mueller, R&D Lead Engineer, Agilent Technologies

High-rate, serial-data technologies require that receivers be tested under the stress of calibrated levels of Gaussian RJ and/or voltage noise. Every standard assumes that noise follows a Gaussian distribution with a white frequency spectrum. But is real noise truly Gaussian? Should RJ be applied with a white spectrum when oscillators have pink spectra? And, perhaps the most important question, what is the effect of frequency band-limiting on the distribution of ideal and commercially available noise sources? To address all of these questions, we analyze and compare simulated and real noise sources under a host of conditions.