From: "Tom Van Baak" tvb@LeapSecond.com
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Cs stability
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 00:21:37 -0700
Message-ID: 003101c7c843$1d5fcc50$0300a8c0@pc52

Tom,

I never claimed otherwise. I mearly pointed out that some antennas have that
arrangement among a number of others. Clearly few of us happy amatuers play in
that league. Some of us have GPS receivers and antennas at that level.

Cheers,
Magnus

From: "Tom Van Baak" tvb@LeapSecond.com
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Cs stability
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 00:40:49 -0700
Message-ID: 004b01c7c845$cb81d290$0300a8c0@pc52

I think the paper lacks a number of necessary details in order to fully
understand the conditions under which this exercise took place. There is no
clear list of equipment used. It can be implied that it is 5071A being used.
What Time Interval counters where used is for instance not known.

He have compared PPS outputs between GPS receivers (which model are those?)
and Cesium.

I'd like to see some investigations into how stable the GPSes and measurement
equipment is to temperature.

In the end, there are a few pages of material missing in there for it to give a
fairly comprehensive picture. Many of these issues could probably be cleared up
after some discussions with the author, but we should not have to rely on side-
channels like that.

It's an interesting article, but it leaves me with a few questionsmarks. It is
a bit unsatisfying.

Should not be too hard as his email adderess is at the top of the first page.

Cheers,
Magnus

Tom Van Baak wrote:

Tom

The cable phase shift can be compensated by having the interconnect
cable experience the same environment for equivalent lengths.
If the temperature is ramped slowly enough the uncorrected frequency
excursions will be relatively small, otherwise the phase shift due to
the integral of the frequency excursion over time may well be significant.

My point was that Cs standard only regulates (in the long term) the
frequency or rate of change of phase and not the initial phase which is
essentially arbitrary and may well have a significant tempco due to the
tempcos of the synthesiser delay and any buffer delay. The control loop
endeavours to control the frequency experienced by the Cs beam which is
subject to delays in the synthesis chain so that the phase at the
crystal oscillator output itself will be dependent on these temperature
dependent delays.

Bruce

Tom Van Baak wrote:

Tom

Calculations are easy:

Cable delay tempco is at worst 100ppm/K.
with 100ns of cable delay tempco will be 10ps?K or less.
With a 20K temperature change change in delay will be 200ps or less.
The group delay tempco of the antenna components (bandpass filters
amplifiers etc ) is likely to be much greater.

Bruce

Or see a failed TIC test which actually displayed the delay in a piece of
coax showing the temperature in the room as the air conditioning was turning
on and off over night.

http://www.ko4bb.com/Test_Equipment/data/HP5370A coax cable delay.png

I did not calibrate this thermometer though :-)

Didier KO4BB

-----Original Message-----
From: time-nuts-bounces@febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-bounces@febo.com] On
Behalf Of Tom Van Baak
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2007 9:47 PM
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Cs stability

Even a short length of coax is a thermometer if you look
close enough. See the 50 fs / °C tempco at test #6:

http://www.leapsecond.com/pages/tadd-1/

/tvb

time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com
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From: Dr Bruce Griffiths bruce.griffiths@xtra.co.nz
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Cs stability
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 21:30:03 +1200
Message-ID: 469C8C1B.50807@xtra.co.nz

Tom's point is that while we are toying around with L1 C/A code-tracking
receivers the effective noise is so large that more finegrained compensations
in the GPS solution is note taken out so other finegrained offsets will also be
lost. I agree with him. When you toy with dual frequency carrier-tracking
receivers you gain a much better precision in ionspheric correction. Operating
in mm or sub-mm RMS noise on pseudo-ranges noise sources as change of
temperature in cables and mountning stands certainly comes in, as well as the
phase stability of the antenna, quality sites compensates for antenna phase
deviation as they change over the satelite coarse. But that's not very
meaningfull for a L1 C/A code-tracking only receiver, infact such efforts are
lost in the noise and uncompensated biases you have. Especially considering a
cheezy TCXO.

So while it is easy to calculate and compensate, the meaningfullness depends on
the situation. Compensating for cable delay may however be worth it.

Cheers,
Magnus

In case anyone still doesn't know who I am, I need to
mention that I designed the RF electronics in the
5071A in an earlier life, circa 1990.

Now that we have that out of the way, I will agree
with Magnus that the cited paper is severely flawed.
We don't know what models of cesium were used, and
the paper seems to assume that any deviations with
respect to GPS are due solely to the cesium standards.
We also don't know anything about the GPS equipment.
Citation [3] is a 5071A product note.  I guess this
is thrown in to imply that one of the cesiums is a
5071A; but we can't be sure.  A statement is taken
out of context from this product note to the effect
that "some cesiums don't have an independent means
of frequency setting", which might lead the casual
observer to think that this refers to the 5071A.
Actually, the 5071A does have an independent means
of frequency setting, as opposed to older cesium
clocks where you had to vary the C-field to change
the frequency.  For this and other reasons, I don't
put much stock in the paper.

Having said that, let me speak about how we addressed
some of these issues in the 5071A.  First, the matter
of temperature dependent phase shift.  If you have a
really good frequency standard, you have to start to
worry about a temperature ramp resulting in a phase
ramp.  Of course, a phase ramp is a frequency step,
by definition.  The previous modele, the 5061B, like most
cesium clocks, had an architecture where the crystal oscillator
"flywheel" was connected to a splitter that drove
a microwave frequency multiplier from 10 MHz to 9.2
GHz and also an isolation amplifier.  Both of these
were absolutely full of narrow band tuned circuits
with substantial temperature coefficients.  The combination
of these "rubber bands" caused the 10 MHz at the output
connector to be fairly loosely correlated (in terms of 5071A
specifications) with the microwave signals sloshing
around the Cs cavity.  In the 5071A, I used a combination
of a new architecture and better circuit design to
drastically reduce the temperature coefficient of phase.
You can read about this in my 1992 FCS paper (available at
ieee.org or www.karlquist.com/FCS92.pdf).  We measured the RF
hardware by itself to determine its phase contribution to
the overall 5071A.  Our resident perfectionist, Len Cutler,
insisted that all electronic error contributions be less than
a part in 10^14, including this one.  I can assure you that Len was
a very happy camper with respect to the RF chain, and, if
you knew Len, you know that is saying something.

Shortly after the introduction of the 5071A, we had some
colleagues at JPL perform environmental tests on an early
5071A.  For the better part of a year, they ramped up
and down the temperature, humidity, and pressure to see
if they could measure these tempcos.  By using correlative
techniques, such as ramping the temperature on a daily
basis and looking for a fourier peak at 1 day, they were
able to establish a measurement floor of something like
a part in 10^15.  They were never able to see any correlation
whatsoever of frequency to the environment for any of the variables.

Regarding magnetic field sensitivity.  The mu metal shields
of the 5071A are so effective that it is not necessary to
demagnetize them.  Even Len Cutler didn't think so.  A standing
joke was the 5071A demagnetizer accessory that we were going
to build "one of these days".  I think we finally did build
one for some customer who was even more of a perfectionist than
Len.  He didn't see any improvement from using it.  Anyway,
I take any statements about the earth's magnetic field affecting
5071A with a large grain of salt.

AC magnetic fields like 50 Hz, or 60 Hz, are also not a concern.
The frequencies used internally in the 5071A are carefully chosen
to avoid any correlation with those power line frequencies.
Magnetic fields even in the milliTesla range have absolutely no
effect, let alone nanoTesla.

Regarding vibration, acceleration, etc:  earlier cesium beam tubes
did have a problem with the beam wandering around when the
clock was installed on a ship.  In the 5071A, Len carefully
devised a technique to prevent beam wander from having any
effect on accuracy.  Now if you tipped a 5071A upside down,
the 10811 would experience a "2g turnover" frequency step.
The control loop would respond to this within its time constant.
So, admittedly, you might have a temporary frequency shift.
However, there is no known application where a clock needs
to work upside down, so even Len couldn't justify worrying about this.

I hope this clears up any confusion about the 5071A, now
made by my good friends at Symmetricom.

Rick Karlquist N6RK
(now with Agilent)

These are my own opinions and don't represent HP, Agilent,
or Symmetricom.

From: "Richard (Rick) Karlquist" richard@karlquist.com
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Cs stability
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 09:52:22 -0700
Message-ID: MGEKKFGEAIKJOOPJPGIKAEGFJEAA.richard@karlquist.com

Rick,

Good, then I am not the only one seeing that. I must admitt that I didn't give
it a comprehensive readthrough asI was tired as hell when I looked at it, but
I did not get the necessary ques as I browsed through it and even as I dipped
into certain parts in detail it left me unsatisfied.

There is only an indirect reference to 5071A in a.

Do note that he in the introductionary part shows the factor deviation of
2.7E-13 and that he adjusted it manually twice which can be seen in the second
Fig 1.

"Unfortunately, many atomic oscillators lack the possibility of non-invasive
frequency tuning [3]. Using digital correction, the frequency offset of
2.7 E-13 as delivered from factory is shown in Fig.l to be reducable below
1 E-14 with only two frequency corrections at 1800 and 4O00 hours from
start-up, leaving some environmental factors plus a number of unpredictable
timing discrepancies lasting 50-500 horn."

He actually points out that the 5071A lacks that correction, so he agrees with
you. This correction can be done by him as an initial post-processing step.
We just don't know, again. A little sentense or two more on how that was made
would have enlighen us further on that subject.

But what Cesium he actually used is not known.

Many, many thanks for the write-up. I greatly enjoyed it!

Cheers,
Magnus