Ulrich Bangert wrote:

Ulrich

This depends on whether the low pass filter has a shunt capacitor at its
input or a series inductor.
With the shunt capacitor the RF is shunted to ground through this capacitor.
With a series inductor the RF sees a relatively high input impedance and
the mixer will not perform well.

Bruce

From: Dr Bruce Griffiths bruce.griffiths@xtra.co.nz
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] ? phase comparison or other device
Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2007 20:37:29 +1200
Message-ID: 467F7EC9.8090602@xtra.co.nz

Depends on what you want to acheive. NIST made some experiments and found that
this was indeed what increased the gain in the frequency comparisions they
made. They where infact a bit supprised as this was contruary to what they
beleived. It's in the NIST archive, but I could pull the document number out if
given some chance to dig around.

So, what is normally a good thing in RF may not necessarilly be the best
strategy for frequency comparision, at least when it comes to mixers.

Cheers,
Magnus

Bruce,

A few final thoughts.

1. Thanks for the critical view; it does help.

2. Like many time-nuts I have a reasonably good 10MHz source &
   sometimes need to check out a newly acquired OXCO to ensure
   it can muster 1E9 or 1E10 performance (with 10x headroom).
   An SR620 would be ideal, but it's just too many $$ ;even used.
   I expect "casual" participants of time-nuts already have a basic,
   decent counter e.g. HP5335A & a basic decent synthesizer
   e.g. PTS040, Fluke6060(?), HP3335x or 6x. Also, I assumed a
   coaxial level 7 mixer & suitable lowpass filter would be available.

3. I read the JPL paper (more than once) & developed the first three
   stages (modified for 1KHz bandpass) per their process. At that point
   the measured jitter was well under 1ns rms; which was enough to enable
   1E12 resolution for 10MHz sources. I deliberately choose the ADA4899-1
   opamp since it's characterized for 5V operation, low noise, fast & cheap
   enough ($4.30/ea). It was apparent that even with 2 stages the ZCD
   was still under 1ns jitter; the risetime wasn't blazing, but it was
   obviously
   good enough.

4. Without PCB capability (at home & now retired) even this simple
   circuit is tough to build; each part adds significantly to the effort when
   doing 1-up. So I examined the need for every part in an effort to
   minimize parts count, but retain jitter performance. I found that the
   opamp overload recovery was more than fast enough to discard the
   limiting without measurable deterioration in jitter. Lots of parts went
   away; construction became easy.

5. I went TOO FAR. The opamps I had exhibited such low offset that I
   DC coupled without thinking about it. WRONG answer (as you noted),
   Rookie mistake. I have shown the AC coupling & 2nd stage feedback
   resistor in the revised circuit.

6. The ZCD costs <$20 for parts & about 2 hours to build/check out.
   It performs well enough to look at stable sources to 2 parts in 1E12
   in 50 to 100 seconds and be confident in the data. The noise floor is
   easy to measure & verifies functionality.

Is it "well designed" ? NO. Could it be (much) better? Certainly.
Does it work well for it's intended purpose? Yes.

My assumptions about equipment may be out of line. In my case, eBay
supplied everything, except the mixer, filter & ADA4899-1s, so this
effort didn't require much in the way of extra $$. It does what I wanted.

As previously observed, the mixer should have a diplexer between it and
the filter for the mixer higher order products to be terminated properly.
I examined the filter input Z, as terminated, and found it to be from 150
ohms inductive to 1200 ohms inductive from 10 to 30 MHz. This suggests
the use of a feedthrough termination of around 100 ohms as a first order
fix. Using a 93 ohm feedthrough, no improvement, or degradation in results
was noted. This could use more study.

in mind to achieve the same results. Would you detail it?

Regards,
Pete Rawson

Pete wrote:

Pete

Try connecting the input stage inductor and capacitor in parallel with
the 6190 ohm feedback resistor, but before you do this replace the first
opamp with a lower gain bandwidth (audio??) device that is unity gain
stable. This will produce a first gain stage that amplifies the signal
of interest as well as the noise within the tuned circuit bandwidth
without unduly amplifying the noise not within the tuned circuit bandpass.
The other thing you could do since you've chosen a 1kHz beat frequency
is to use an audio transformer to step up the output of the mixer before
amplifying it. NB dont forget to connect the transformer to ground
through a capacitor that has a low impedance at 1kHz (this ensures that
the dc load current at the mixer IF port is low)..

The mixer IF port should be terminated with a 10nF capacitor and a
simple low pass filter consisting of say a 100uH inductor and a 1nF
capacitor substituted for the 1.9MHz bandpass filter.
This, as shown by the NIST paper alluded to by Magnus, will increase the
mixer sensitivity considerably. You should also run the mixer with both
the RF and LO ports saturated ie more than 7dBm for both of these ports.

The mixer output noise at the 1KHz beat frequency will be somewhere in
the vicinity of 100nV/rtHz, so if you have say a 1V peak output then the
inherent jitter due to mixer noise will be around 160ps rms for a tuned
circuit noise bandwidth of 100Hz. With a suitable amplifier choice you
shouldn't degrade this by more than 5% or so. Achieving a resolution of
better than 1E-13 in 1 second with a 10MHz input and a suitable counter
is easy, provided you dont rely on the counters input circuitry to
trigger on the amplified mixer output you need a signal chain like that
used by JPL. With a suitable comparator and well designed limiting
stages one can easily achieve this resolution.

With a relatively low resolution counter you will get better results if
you use a 1Hz beat frequency like JPL did, then a resolution of around
1E-14 in 1 second with a 10MHz input and a cheap 100ns resolution
counter is easily achieved.

You can do 1E-12 resolution in a minute or so with nothing more advanced
than a high resolution chart recorder (perhaps not a physical one but
use an inexpensive ADC) and a linear phase comparator, you don't even
need a counter.

Ulrich and I are currently working on phase comparator that promises
higher resolution than you have achieved, however the JPL approach is
capable of a resolution several orders of magnitude better than this.
The resolution offered by the JPL approach is required when you want to
compare a couple of hydrogen masers or other sources with equivalent or
better stability. For less stable sources a simple phase comparator
should suffice for most purposes.

A project to produce an equivalent of the JPL zero crossing detector is
underway.
Inexpensive audio grade opamps will be used, wideband opamps are
unnecessary.
The final stage will be a relatively slow comparator (AD790).
The largest contribution to phase instability will be the temperature
dependent phase shift of the 1Hz low pass filter.

Just as JPL did a mixer with separate isolated grounds for all 3 ports
will be used (eg Minicircuits RMS-1, HP10534B etc)

Standard synthesizers and DDS circuits are far too noisy for generating
the 10MHz -1Hz signal, so an offset generator equivalent to the one JPL
developed will be required for optimum performance.

Bruce

Hi Pete,

Do you have it available in electronic form (or know a link that I
might download it from)?

Thanks,

	Peter Vince  (G8ZZR, London)

I have the JPL zero crossing detector paper scanned in.
(John Dick, et al, 1990 PTTI).  It is definitely a must
read.

Do you want me to email to you?

Rick Karlquist N6RK

Post it to Didier Juges's site?

ftp.ko4bb.com
User: manuals
Password: manuals

-- john, KE5FX