On Sun, Sep 22, 2013 at 4:30 AM, W3KL <[email protected]> wrote: > How does one make a measurement of the phase stability of an oscillator over > a time period much larger than the oscillator period? For example, I have > an oscillator with a frequency of 4 MHz and I want to measure the phase > drift of the RF between a given point in time and then a time 4 seconds > later. I want to make a measurement that has a precision of 0.1 degree or > better.
The simplest way to first to get a very much better oscillator than the one you need to test. You need a "refference". Then you "add them" and if there is any deference at all you will get a beat frequency If the two are "close" the beat will be very slow, slow enough you can measure the period with a wrst watch. Put the two on a daul channel scope nd watch. More sofesticaed method is to use a transformer to add the two signals then feed the sun into a computer's audio input or otherwise record the beat frequency. You can do an FFT on the recording. I sure others will have even better methods but my point is that simple technique can work, provided you have a really god reference oscillator. -- Chris Albertson Redondo Beach, California _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
