Thrashing

CORE DEFINITION

Jitter, also known as time base error, refers to the difference between a periodic signal and its true period in electronics and telecommunications, typically relative to a reference clock signal. Time base error can affect the analog output of digital-to-analog converters. In communication links (such as USB, PCI-E, SATA, OC-48), especially during the reconstruction of sampled signals, jitter is undesirable. Like all time-varying signals, jitter can be quantified, for example, by root mean square (RMS) or peak-to-peak displacement, and can also be quantified by spectral distribution. The jitter period is the period during which the time between two peaks of a signal changes. The jitter frequency is the reciprocal of the jitter period. If the jitter frequency has little impact on the system, it can be ignored in low-end system designs.