TESTING OF TRANSMITTERS FOR COMMUNICATION LINKS BY SOFTWARE SIMULATION OF REFERENCE CHANNEL AND/OR REFERENCE RECEIVER

摘要

A transmitter for a communications link is tested by using a software simulation for a reference channel and/or a reference channel receiver to test the transmitter. In one embodiment for optical fiber communication links, a data test pattern (450) is applied to the transmitter under test (405) and the resulting waveform is subsequently processed by the software simulation (467), in order to simulate propagation of the optical signal through the reference channel and/or reference receiver. A performance metric for the transmitter is calculated based on the processed waveform.