Jitter

Jitter describes the fluctuation of the clock signal (clock jitter) during the transmission of digital signals. Clock jitter can occur if there is electromagnetic interference, or the clock is incorrectly synchronized. In the network area, jitter is used to describe the variations in the runtime of data packets. If the runtime fluctuates, this is extremely problematic for data transmission. Runtime fluctuations have a particularly critical effect on applications in real time, such as Voice over IP (VoIP) telephony. Such applications then have high jitter values when runtime fluctuations occur. A jitter buffer helps to minimize the runtime fluctuations and thus the delays in transmissions.