Your friends talked you into trying the latest thing and you signed up for VoIP phone service. Yeah, you love that you can call that little hottie in California without spending big bucks on it, but you hate the issues that you get with the sound quality from time to time. That, my friend is called Jitter, and can be a problem for not only your computer based phone calls, but your audio CDs as well. Understanding what jitter is and how to stop it is key in improving your phone call quality.

 

Anti-Jitter Circuit

 

Jitter is defined as the unwanted variation during communications that will equal out to poor sound, distorted voice or dropped signals. Jitter can be as troublesome with mobile phone calls and in some cases with the traditional public switched telephone network (PTSN) as well. The next time a call keeps cutting out or sounds funny, you can blame it on jitter rather than on your old clunker of a cell phone. Jitter is more of a problem with VoIP right now because the technology is still newer and working out its bugs- once the network is more established, the jitter can hopefully be reduced.

 

Right now, to prevent or reduce the amount of jitter per phone call, or in other telecommunication applications, there are several methods. Anti-jitter circuits, reduces jitter within a regular pulse signal by re-timing the output pulses. There are several types of the anti-jitter circuitry.

 

Jitter Buffer

 

A jitter buffer seeks to realign packet streams in a packet switched network such as the one used by VoIP. These buffers can be relatively complex and some may actually be even more unfavorable than the jitter they seek to eliminate or reduce. As the packets of information are moved around and reorganized by the jitter buffer, the callers may notice strange sounds or lengthy bouts of dead air- making them question why they even bother in the first place.

 

De-Jitterizer

 

And finally, the final option is the de-jitterizer that seeks to reduce jitter coming from digital signal. This type of buffer stores the packet briefly and then sends it back out- at a rate determined by the average rate of the incoming signal. These devices are not very effective dealing with certain types of jitter however.