Thanks John, that sounds like a great project. I've been wanting to get experience designing circuits for a long time, but have never had a specific project to work towards. When I was a computer programmer I discovered it was a lot easier to learn a new language if you actually had a reason to need it.
Thanks again for referencing the pages in the TimeLab manual. I suppose it would do be well to read it a little more thoroughly than I have previously ;) Side note, I checked into the 3120s today at work and you're pretty much spot on. Running about $8k from one local distributor. That may very well be GSA pricing too, I should know by tomorrow. I agree though that concepts and theory of operation are more well understood by actually designing and building things... at least for me. Cheers, -Tim On Wed, Feb 3, 2016 at 1:06 AM, John Miles <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi, Timothy -- > > > I've had an Agilent 53220A for some time, and recently discovered the > > wonderful TimeLab software, but I've hit a bit of a snag trying to run > some > > ADEV measurements on a Rb clock. The problem is that the graph doesn't > > line up with the amount of data TimeLab says is collected. I ran an > > acquisition for 100 seconds, but according to the chart it only shows > data > > collected for 20 seconds.... > > See page 31-32 of the manual ( > http://www.miles.io/TimePod_5330A_user_manual.pdf). I think you'll find > it anticipates that very same question. :) > > > On a side note, I was disappointed to find out that I missed the boat on > > the semi-affordable TimePod. Is there anything remotely in the price rang > > (sub 5K) that can do stability AND phase noise measurements? It seems > like > > the Wavecrest DST "might" be able to, but from what I read in the > time-nuts > > archive I wasn't able to get a clear picture.... there's an app note > > floating around about making phase noise measurements with it, but > > nothing > > solid. > > The Microsemi 3120A's price has come down a bit over time, so I'd suggest > checking with them to see what the current pricing is like. (Obligatory > disclaimer: I have no current financial/professional involvement with the > 3120A.) I suspect it's still well north of $5K, depending on options, but > I know they've stepped back from the initial prices they were quoting. > > I'd encourage you to build something, though, given that you're not doing > this stuff for your day job. There's a reasonable amount of literature out > there on both quadrature PLLs for PN measurement and the related tight-PLL > topology that's well-suited to stability measurement. They can both return > very high-quality results for very little money, if you're willing to put > in the necessary "sweat equity." This approach is much more educational > than simply throwing money at hardware, and (speaking from experience) more > fun as well. > > -- john, KE5FX > Miles Design LLC > > _______________________________________________ > 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. > _______________________________________________ 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.
