BA-1600 - 1.6T Bit Analyzer

Resumen
The BA-1600 is a world-class series of 1.6T electrical BER testers, with 4- and 8- channel PAM4 coding options for ultimate flexibility

Características principales

  • Full lifecycle validation for 1.6T, 800G and 400G across lab, fab and live environments.
  • BLER: block error ratio statistics and an efficient FLR estimation mechanism, addressing the time constraints of ultra-low BER measurements.
  • High-performance signal integrity and BER testing for validating compliance and performance in next-gen 1.6T designs
  • Flexible, cost-effective: choose 8 channel unit for transceiver testing, or 4-channel unit for high-speed component testing
  • User-friendly GUI streamlines workflows, and reduces learning curves
  • PAM4 support for validating high-speed signaling performance

Aplicaciones

  • Test and validation of 1.6T transceivers
  • Testing high throughput in manufacturing
  • 800G/1.6T interconnect testing
  • Hyperscalers and AI data centers

Aspectos destacados

Win the race to 1.6T 

The BA-1600 1.6T Bit Analyzer series delivers full lifecycle validation for 1.6T, 800G and 400G testing across lab, fab and live environments. It supports 4- channel and 8-channel PAM4 coding at 106.25, 53.125 and 26.5625 GBd per lane, it’s purpose-built as an electrical BERT for validating 1.6T Ethernet.

Designed for speed and simplicity, the BA-1600 series features a user-friendly GUI, powerful automation and ‘save-and-load’ functionality to streamline workflows and reduce setup time. Engineers can run high-performance signal integrity and BER testing, generate and analyze FEC, monitor block error ratio (BLER), and access I²C registers for fast, low-level diagnostics and debugging.

Transceiver designers, hyperscalers and AI data centers 

Transceiver designers choose the BA-1600 series test solution for complete lab-to-live testing of their 1.6T transceiver technology. This encompasses the development of transceivers in a lab environment, to the fabrication process of the device, through to ensuring those devices work as expected out in live environments. Hyperscalers use the BA-1600 series to perform pre-evaluation testing of transceivers prior to mass deployment of equipment across their AI data centers, ensuring the latest transceiver technology is working as per specification and is interoperable.

FEC is built in—so testing needs to go deeper 

In next-gen optical transceivers, FEC encoding and decoding has moved from the host to inside the transceiver itself—making FEC testing essential for supported models. These transceivers now do more than convert electrical to optical signals; they actively manage error correction.  

In 200G-per-lane transceivers using concatenated FEC, as defined by IEEE 802.3dj, it’s critical to test resilience to error bursts.  

EXFO’s BA-1600 includes a powerful hardware FEC generation and analysis capability, enabling validation under real-world conditions, including error bursts.  

 

Verify receiver reliability faster and with improved accuracy 

Validating 800G and 1.6T receivers to ultra-low error-rate targets can take hours—or even days—when using traditional BER methods. A new method is improving that time dramatically. This new framework replaces long BER accumulation with a predictive, histogram-based approach that estimates frame loss ratio (FLR) and block error ratio (BLER) from symbol error statistics. The result: faster, more accurate receiver verification.

The BA-1600 1.6T bit analyzer leverages this new method to deliver:

  • Accurate FLR and BLER estimation using symbol-error histograms
  • Shorter test durations with high statistical confidence
  • Detection of burst and non-random error patterns