Re: [time-nuts] Reference oscillator requirements when measuring ADEV ?

2011-07-14 Thread Bruce Griffiths

Mark Spencer wrote:


I'm curious in knowing if there are any rules of thumb as to how much better a
reference oscillator needs to be than the device under test when measuring ADEV
?
  
To provide a bit of context to my question I'm using a HP 5370B to repeatedly

measure the time interval between the 10 Mhz signals from a FTS 1050 and
rubidium oscillator.  

  
Having compared the FTS 1050 to another OCXO in the past I'm confident that it

is meeting or exceeding it's spec of an ADEV of 1X10-12 or better at tau's of
say 100 thru 1000 seconds.   I'm also confident that at tau's of 100 seconds or
more the noise introduced by the 5370B is less than 1x10-12.   
  
The underlying question that I have is how much confidence could I put in

measurements that show the rubidium of having an ADEV of say less than 2.0X10-12
at a tau of 100 sec ?  



This is just for a hobby (: and I'm not looking for any degree of certainty but
I'm curious in understanding how accurate the measurements might be and if
changes in the measurements might not be caused by changes in the device under
test.  
  
Thanks in advance for any replies.
  
Regards

Mark Spencer


   
The reference oscillator needs to be at least a factor of 3 (preferably 
10x) better for all Tau of interest.
Unless of curse one uses a 3 (or N) cornered hat technique in which case 
the ADEV of the oscillators being compared may be similar for the Tau 
range of interest.
However one needs to guard against correlations between oscillators due 
to injection locking, environmental fluctuations etc.


For Tau= 100s relatively simple low cost three cornered hat setups (with 
an instrumentation ADEV noise floor below 1E-12) are feasible (provided 
on has a suitable offset oscillator) using inexpensive digital logic 
plus a suitable microprocessor.

No complex interpolators are required.

Bruce

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Re: [time-nuts] Reference oscillator requirements when measuring ADEV ?

2011-07-14 Thread Bob Camp
Hi

You can be quite sure it's no worse than 2x10^-12. It is pretty common to scale 
by square root of two based on a they could be equal assumption. 

Bob



On Jul 14, 2011, at 8:32 PM, Mark Spencer mspencer12...@yahoo.ca wrote:

 
 
 I'm curious in knowing if there are any rules of thumb as to how much better 
 a 
 reference oscillator needs to be than the device under test when measuring 
 ADEV 
 ?
  
 To provide a bit of context to my question I'm using a HP 5370B to repeatedly 
 measure the time interval between the 10 Mhz signals from a FTS 1050 and 
 rubidium oscillator.   
 
  
 Having compared the FTS 1050 to another OCXO in the past I'm confident that 
 it 
 is meeting or exceeding it's spec of an ADEV of 1X10-12 or better at tau's of 
 say 100 thru 1000 seconds.   I'm also confident that at tau's of 100 seconds 
 or 
 more the noise introduced by the 5370B is less than 1x10-12.   
  
 The underlying question that I have is how much confidence could I put in 
 measurements that show the rubidium of having an ADEV of say less than 
 2.0X10-12 
 at a tau of 100 sec ?   
 
 
 This is just for a hobby (: and I'm not looking for any degree of certainty 
 but 
 I'm curious in understanding how accurate the measurements might be and if 
 changes in the measurements might not be caused by changes in the device 
 under 
 test.  
  
 Thanks in advance for any replies.
  
 Regards
 Mark Spencer
 
 
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