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BA-4000 Bit Analyzer - Electrical 800G Bit Error Rate Tester

Electrical BERT supporting NRZ and PAM4 coding, with FEC tools and testing capabilities up to 800G.

Complete suite of bit analyzers for R&D and manufacturing up to 800G

The BA-4000 is a world-class series of 100G/800G electrical bit-error-rate (BER) testers. It is designed for the production line, quality control and R&D use from components to transceivers and cables. 

The BA-4000-RCNC model has been specifically designed to enable the testing of linear-drive pluggable optics (LPO), a technology addressing the need of high bandwidth and low power interconnects required by AI/ML applications. The strong correlation between the BA-4000-RCNC test results and real switch performance reduces uncertainty, allowing manufacturers to qualify transceivers with confidence and efficiency.

Multiple use cases from R&D to validation and manufacturing

IC vendors/manufacturers

Excellent signal quality

Transceivers and cable manufacturers

Discover the FEC capability on BA-4000

Bit error rate (BER) is the major indicator of the performance of transceivers and transmission systems based on PAM4 modulation. Discover all the advanced FEC features available on the BA-4000.

Powerful equalizer and channel simulator designed for LPO testing

With LPO transceivers, no DSP is present to precondition or equalize the electrical signal, as is done in retimed optics. Therefore, any change in signal integrity on the host side is reflected onto the optical side and the more times the signal is handed off, the more potential for introduction of bit errors. Traditional transceiver testing techniques can’t pick up this signal degradation so new, more powerful testing techniques are required. The BA-4000-RCNC detects the presence of reflection, intersymbol interference (ISI) and FEC tail instability which are key performance indicators, capturing the presence of errors. Learn more. 

Key features

100G (4x28GBd), 400G (4x56GBd) & 800G (8x56GBd)
Supports NRZ and PAM4
Supports PRBS 7/9/11/13/15/23/31/13Q/31Q, SSPRQ
FEC capability: RS-FEC Scrambled Idle Pattern for testing 53 GBd host side interfaces
Channel simulator
Burst/random error injection
Supports linear/gray mapping
O-SMPM connection

Reflection cancellation and noise cancellation (RCNC) for LPO testing

Applications

Test and validation of transceivers and cables

Test of optical components and PIC

Test of high-speed electrical IC

Description

Bit error rate (BER) is a key performance attribute for digital communications. The signal transmission quality of a network, subsystem or component, can be evaluated using a BER tester, which compares the data stream received to the transmitted sequence and computes the number of errors.

The BA-4000 Bit Analyzer is an electrical NRZ/PAM4 BER tester designed for the production floor. It comes in six models:

  • BA-4000-4-28-NRZ: 100G BERT including 4-channel NRZ 28 Gbit/s.
  • BA-4000-8-28-NRZ: 200G BERT including 8-channel NRZ 28 Gbit/s.
  • BA-4000-4-28-PAM: 100G/200G BERT enabling either 4-channel NRZ 28 Gbit/s or 4-channel PAM4 28 GBd.
  • BA-4000-4-56-PAM: 200G/400G BERT enabling either 4-channel NRZ 56 Gbit/s or 4-channel PAM4 56 GBd.
  • BA-4000-8-28-PAM: 200G/400G BERT suitable for either 8-channel NRZ 28 Gbit/s or 8-channel PAM4 28 GBd.
  • BA-4000-8-56-PAM: 400G/800G BERT suitable for either 8-channel NRZ 56 Gbit/s or 8-channel PAM4 56 GBd.

The BA-4000 Bit Analyzer leverages FEC simulation capabilities to provide powerful analysis for burst error. Some of the main FEC features are:

  • PRBS error check and correction
  • Pre-FEC and Post-FEC BER
  • KP4/KR4 and low latency FEC protocols
  • FEC Generator and Checker (FGC) to address RS-FEC Scrambled Idle Pattern
  • FEC symbol error distribution plot: codewords vs symbols errors
  • FEC margin auto-calculation

Resources

All resources
Application notes
BA-4000-L2-RCNC – How to address design and testing challenges of LPO transceivers - English (March 12, 2025)
Application notes
BA-4000-L2-RCNC – How to address design and testing challenges of LPO transceivers - Français (March 12, 2025)
Application notes
BA-4000-L2-RCNC – How to address design and testing challenges of LPO transceivers - 日本語 (March 12, 2025)
Application notes
BA-4000-L2-RCNC – How to address design and testing challenges of LPO transceivers - 中文 (March 12, 2025)
Flyers and pamphlets
BA-4000 Series - LPO testing - English (April 08, 2025)
User manual
BA-4000 Bit Analyzer - English (November 01, 2021)
Webinar
Optimizing power usage as data centers shift to 800G - English (January 16, 2024)
Spec sheet
BA-4000 Bit Analyzer - English (March 26, 2025)
Spec sheet
BA-4000 Bit Analyzer - Français (March 26, 2025)
Spec sheet
BA-4000 Bit Analyzer - 中文 (March 26, 2025)
Blog
How to address challenges in the end-to-end qualification of pluggable transceivers? - English (January 17, 2021)
Webinar
From 400G to 800G: encoded FEC, the key enabler for next-gen transceivers. - English (November 02, 2021)
Webinar
Still bogged down by issues when rolling out next-gen high speeds from R&D to manufacturing? - English (May 16, 2023)
Application notes
Unveiling the secrets of 200G/400G optical transceivers - English (March 20, 2020)
Addenda
Notice Important Information - BA-4000 - English (November 23, 2022)
Addenda
Notice Important Information - BA-4000 - Français (November 23, 2022)

Support