Rohde & Schwarz, will host the High-Speed Digital Test Forum 2025 on April 8 at its Technology Center at the company’s headquarters in Munich, Germany. The one-day, face-to-face event will look at how development and testing is evolving with the expansion of digitalization in industry sectors like artificial intelligence (AI), data centers, industry automation, wireless communication, aerospace & defense and autonomous driving. Experts from Rohde & Schwarz alongside specialists from industry partners will provide educational sessions to share their knowledge and experience.
The agenda features the following highlights: The opening keynote delivered by Granite River Labs will set the scene by looking at global digitalization, big data and AI, discussing the key trends and drivers, the impact on high-speed designs and power distribution networks, as well as the increasing challenges in signal and power integrity.
The first session is hosted by experts from Rohde & Schwarz and Texas Instruments about power design challenges created by high-speed system-on-chips (SoCs) and field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). It will cover the complexities of multiple power rails and power supply architectures, and the role that oscilloscopes can play in supporting the testing and analysis of these intricate power designs, enabling engineers to measure precisely and validate the performance of multiphase buck converters.
In the next presentation by Rohde & Schwarz and Granite River Labs, focusing on USB 3.2 Gen 1 and Gen 2 electrical compliance testing, participants will gain valuable insight into the requirements and test set-ups for transmitter and receiver tests. Topics will include spread spectrum clocking, jitter and eye diagram analysis and pre-shoot/de-emphasis.
Considering the increasing amounts of data being processed in modern vehicles, experts from Rohde & Schwarz and Granite River Labs will look in the last morning session at reducing in-vehicle network complexity, power consumption and weight, moving from domain-orientated network architecture to zonal architecture. The session will give particular emphasis to 10BASE-T1S and MultiGBASE-T1 technologies and how to test these new networks effectively.
The afternoon will begin with Rohde & Schwarz experts examining the challenges for signal and power integrity caused by the integration of double data rate (DDR) and low power double data rate (LPDDR) memory technologies. Participants will hear about the most effective tools for debugging and characterization as well as automated test solutions for conformance verification. There will also be a practical demonstration on how to de-embed the effects of interposers correctly in DDR testing, and how to utilize debugging tools as Zone Trigger and Read/Write Separation for eye diagram analysis.
The next session held by Rohde & Schwarz and Granite River Labs will be looking at the challenges of signal integrity analysis and compliance testing in relation to MIPI D-PHY. Originally developed to enable high-speed data transmission between cameras and displays in smartphones, this physical layer specification has gained widespread adoption in automotive, consumer and industrial applications. An overview will be given of specified conformance tests, highlighting challenges unique to these tests and discussing recommended measurement setups.
In the following session Rohde & Schwarz experts will provide insights into testing DisplayPort 1.4a physical layer compliance. Details covered will be how to debug signal integrity problems with tools like eye diagram analysis and jitter and noise decomposition.
The High-Speed Digital Test Forum 2025 will close with two key talks from experts at Rohde & Schwarz and Granite River Labs about PCB and interconnect testing. One will share best practice experience on vector network analyzers (VNAs) in high-speed digital applications for accurate test fixture characterization and de-embedding. The final presentation will focus on testing lane-to-lane crosstalk in high-speed PCB and interconnect designs.
“With digitalization everywhere in the modern world, it’s more important than ever that engineers are aware of the very latest solutions and best practices for meeting today’s challenges in signal integrity and power integrity testing,” says Martin Stumpf, Segment Manager High-Speed Digital Test at Rohde & Schwarz and organizer of the event. “This face-to-face forum will not only provide engineers with access to the knowledge and lived experience of some of the world’s leading industry experts in this field, but also the opportunity to exchange their own experiences with other participants. Complexity is increasing, and this kind of event is invaluable for those who want to navigate the future.”
