); SAEximRunCond expanded to false
Errors-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
In a message dated 7/19/2007 16:37:05 Pacific Daylight Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
Do I understand that a version is available
that takes in an external 10MHz clock and internally disciplines that
to GPS? Perhaps by DDS techniques?
Regards,
Peter
Hi Peter,
Thanks so much for your question! Let me try to explain how Fury can be used:
We can steer an external 10MHz source with an analog voltage (0V to 5) with
24+ bits of resolution, so the actual disciplining is happening in the
external steerable source via EFC voltage from the Fury.
There are two ways an external source can be used: the first is to remove
the on-board GPS receiver, and feed an external 1PPS into the unit (say from a
dirty Rubidium that needs to be cleaned up). This is often done where GPS
reception could be denied (military apps for example). The Fury has a 1PPS
input
connector for this purpose.
In the second option we remove the on-board OCXO, and replace it with two
SMA connectors, one is used to feed 10MHz into the Fury from the external OCXO,
the other feeds the EFC control voltage (0V to 5V) to the OCXO for steering.
The steering is done through a 24+ bits DAC into the OCXO, so there is no
DDS on the Fury. The OCXO can be anything as long as it has 10MHz output and
is
steerable. It can be a Rb or Cs, Cs Fountain, SAW oscillator, etc. :)
Actually, with a slight firmware change we can discipline almost any
oscillator
from 1MHz to 15MHz+ if we had to.
It's a more traditional analog steering using the OCXO itself. I understand
that the DDS method is patent-protected, and it also has the drawback of
requiring a fast DDS running at some GPS-asynchronous frequency (say 400MHz, or
1GHz) which could create noise and beat frequencies with the steered 10MHz
output. The DDS implementation is also a sampled-data system, so issues such
as
aliasing, Nyquist issues, Spurs, etc. have to be carefully addressed not to
show up in the -155dBc/Hz or better noise-floor we are aiming for.
I personally like the simple, but elegant Varacter-Diode steered-Crystal
solution better than having a DDS do the trick.
That said, our FireFox DDS-based synthesizer can generate signals with 10
microhertz resolution, and is controllable via SCPI commands over RS-232, so
with a bit of software running on a PC (etc) and an external phase-comparator
it
could be used to generate a software-steerable GPSDO.
Hope this answers your question,
thanks again,
bye,
Said
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