Jim I am not sure if this will meet your requirement for "hygene" but google
Trinity Power Inc (Bob Yarbrough) he has a unit that was featured in EDN
some time around a year ago. I doesnt switch fast enough at present but that
could be altered..... the problem might be that I think it is a PLL Rather
than a DDS..... But might be worth a look ....I know the PTS I have a couple
of earlier Wavetek- Rockland units ...one TTL and one GPIB also an Adret 201
which uses the same technique.
Alan
G3NYK
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Lux" <[email protected]>
To: "Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement"
<[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2014 6:02 PM
Subject: [time-nuts] fast switching quiet synthesizer
At work, I'm putting together a multichannel stepped frequency CW radar
breadboard, and I'm looking for something to serve as a source that I can
step quickly.
I'm looking at stepping every millisecond or so. Right now, I use a
Ardunino type microcontroller driving a serial DAC driving a VCO, but
that's a bit wonky and noisy, although it's easy to get the step timing
right on. The spectral purity is, shall we say, downright ugly.
Since I'm going to be doing precision ranging with this, the spectral
purity has to be reasonably good (not 1E-15 at 1000 seconds good,
fortunately)..
I was thinking about a PTS synthesizers (beloved of time-nuts for all
kinds of reason), and they're nice because they are quiet, and switch
really fast (microseconds). However, they all seem to have BCD or GPIB
interfaces (only). Sure, I can code up something on an Arduino or other
microcontroller to drive the BCD on the PTS, but maybe there's something
else out there that might work as well? And is already off the shelf.
I could hook a Prologix on the back of a PTS with GPIB, and hit it over
the ethernet, but I'm not sure I'd be able to get the steps to occur when
I want them (ethernet and determinism do not go well together).
Maybe some DDS in a box product? That will take my nice clean 10 MHz
reference?
Ultimately, I'm looking at output frequencies in single digit GHz, but
something that can be mixed/multiplied up will work just fine.
I'm looking for something that is off the shelf-ey as much as possible.
Using surplus gear is ok, because I really only need 3 or 4 channels and
that might be scroungeable, but spending hours wiring up weird adapters or
locating connectors that haven't been made since 1943 is something I'd
like to avoid.
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