Am 20.07.2015 um 01:57 schrieb KA2WEU--- via time-nuts:
Good evening, this turns out to be a good discussion...
Any more inputs ? 73 de Ulrich

1. To get a gut feeling about the virtues of nonlinear noise simulation: how much phase noise will we typically lose if we stay with linear simulation? I mean, we have been told so often how important it is that the amplifier offers a constant (low) impedance to the crystal and that the smallest nonlinearity would be an invitation to noise up conversion. It does not take a lot of conversion gain when one looks at -150 dBc. So, even if we use a HB simulator, the DUT will have to be pretty linear.


2. What do you consider the optimum AGC for, say, a Driscoll or Butler at 100 MHz? In my current work, most of the logic is triple module redundant and the oscillator is a single point of failure. Stopping oscillation at an EFC extreme would be a nightmare, but phase noise performance still cannot be ignored.


3. Is there any work on AGC vs. post tuning drift?


4. In [1] there are is some treatment about removing 1/f noise of a RF transistor by active LF feedback. It is applied to a BFR93A and the effect can be seen clearly. There are other faster transistors that would need that much more urgently, and for > 40 dB of 1/f noise probably more loop gain would be required. I can see a place for an ADA4898 here… Also, there are 1K resistors in the bases of both the RF and the AF transistors while we are discussing here replicating the transistors to shrink the effective base spreading resistance. It seems that the improvement could be much larger.


BTW I got -145dBc @100MHz @100Hz with mass production BFR93 transistors in Butlers, and the limit seemed to be ONLY the crystal; most crystals were much worse, even when they had comparable parameters and were from the same batch.


5. One must always find a balance between optimum close-in or far-out noise. The emitter input impedance of a 2 stage Butler sustaining amplifier may serve as an example. Make it small and there will be only a slight operating Q degradation - but less power available to the input of the sustaining amp. with a given crystal current; needing more gain and raising the floor.
Make it larger, and you get less operating Q and better floor.

Only 10% of a crystal batch seem to provide excellent close-in noise, the others being easily 10 dB worse. These others are more or less free (at least already paid for). They still could be used as a post-filter to shrink the noise floor. It would be necessary to de-Q them with resistors so that they can withstand the power and that they do not spoil the close-in noise.

Or use a bridge xtal filter that has no crystal resonance on the center frequency. That would require some discipline when tuning the oscillator to avoid blowing the filter crystals. Far out the noise still would decrease by 6 dB/oct Fourier-frequency-wise. 20 dB better makes the difference between OK and excellent.

[1] Rohde/Newkirk: RF/Microwave Circuit Design for Wireless Applications, Wiley

very short excerpt for a few days on < https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/XUfeAuD8TvNqBOMuJiPtltMTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=directlink>

73, Gerhard, DK4XP
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