Hi,

On 2022-07-05 12:13, Mike Monett via time-nuts wrote:
You stated:

Mike,
The phase detector is an ADE-1 mixer, the IF output of the mixer goes
into a loop filter that has a corner frequency of about 0.2Hz to enable
Phase noise measurements down to 1Hz offset

That is your problem. A double balanced mixer is an exclusive-or phase
detector. The lock range is determined by the loop bandwidth, as you have
found.

The phase-frequency detector is completely different. It will lock to any
signal in the lock range, independent of loop bandwidth. You can have a
bandwidth of 0.001 Hz, and it will still lock. Think of what this could do
for your phase measurements.

Actually, there is two schools here.

There is the school of stateless phase-detectors (such as mixers) and the school of stateful phase-detectors (such as three-state mixers).

Now, in the school of stateless phase-detectors, mixers, XOR-gates, samplers etc. the capture range becomes dependent on the loop gain.

For passive lag filters, you will need a significant static phase-difference on the input to provide the state of the EFC to compensate on the frequency. It's very simply that the DC volt difference coming out of the detectors, through the DC gain of the filter is then what becomes the EFC.

In active lag filters, you add additional gain, and this requires lower phase detector voltage to support the same EFC error.

Both these actually have an implicit state in the phase detector to compensate the lack of state elsewhere. It is just not that the phase detector holds explicit state.

In PI filters, the state of the frequency error is moved from the phase detector to the filter. The integrator has close to infinity in DC gain (naturally limited in practice, but for many purposes we can assume it being infinite) such that it drives the DC phase offset out of the phase detector to zero and builds up the needed EFC state in the integrator capacitor. This have the benefit that capture range is in theory unlimited, but even if the actual range is in practice limited, it is so wide that we can treat it as infinite for most cases. The PI loop those do not need any form of aiding to lock up. However, aiding it can increase lock-up time. You could either pre-trim the EFC or you could increase the PLL bandwidth to achieve quick lockup. The later is actually very simple and has very huge impact.

The thing people do wrong with PI filters is to scale the bandwidth on the output side of the integrator. This is wrong, as one then needs to scale the output to maintain the acquired state to match the needed EFC. The right way to do it is to scale it on the input side. That way the scaling to EFC is maintained and no state-scaling is needed.

As one scales the bandwidth through I one needs to scale P accordingly to maintain good damping properties.

Fairly simple PI-loop setups allow for good lockup and stability properties.

Cheers,
Magnus
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