Stephan Sandenbergh wrote:
Hi,

Thanks this is good advice.

Pointing the spectrum analyzer to fc + delta seems to be similar
than deducing phase noise from the ZCD output since this would be with
reference to (fc + delta) in any how? Provided the aliasing issue can be
sorted.

Regarding the aliasing issue - in order to plot phase noise up to 100kHz I
would use a 300kHz beat sampled at 100MHz (which is the sampling system I
got available). Obviously, making sure I have sufficient bandwidth in all
areas.
The definition requires that both the noise at fc + delta and the noise at fc-delta be added to obtain the phase noise at an offset of delta.
This is easy to do either in an FPGA or in post processing.

If you are sampling at 100MHz then the post mixer filter only need limit the bandwidth sufficiently to eliminate the mixer sum product and keep the noise signal within the bandwidth of the following amplifier. Additional filtering if required can be implemented as digital filters.

Note with a 300kHz beat frequency phase noise components at offsets greater than fcarrier + 300KHz will be folded into the mixer output spectrum so using a carrier bandpass filter with a bandwidth smaller than the beat frequency may be advisable.
Cheers.

Stephan.
Bruce

On 10 March 2011 10:50, Bruce Griffiths<bruce.griffi...@xtra.co.nz>  wrote:

For conventional phase noise measurements at offsets in the (10Hz, 20kHz)
range one can use a sound card with a low noise preaamp.
Suitable sound card preamps with lower noise floors than Enrico's or
Wenzel's designs can be built using readily available components.
Wider bandwidths ( up to 1MHz or so) are not difficult to achieve.

Bruce


Stephan Sandenbergh wrote:

Hi,

Cross-correlation a very clever idea! Thanks for the reference - Rubiola
got
some good sources of reference on his home page.

One thing though - for a phase-noise kit one will probably need to replace
the ZCD with a low-noise amplification stage of around 80dB to be to allow
sampling at ADC voltage levels?

Cheers,

Stephan.

On 8 March 2011 22:28, Magnus Danielson<mag...@rubidium.dyndns.org>
  wrote:



On 03/08/2011 07:46 PM, Stephan Sandenbergh wrote:



Hi,

I recently noticed something interesting: The DMTD measurement gives a
set
of phase values x(t). From which fractional frequency y(t) is
calculable.
So
now it seems viable to plot the spectrum, Sy(f) and if you scale it
properly
you arrive at Sphi(f). If I'm  not making a gross error somewhere the
math
seems to check out. But, I'm wondering is there a physical reason why
this
isn't valid?

I have not seen this being done anywhere - so I assume there is.
However,
it
seems possible to plot Sphi(f) for 1Hz<    f<100kHz when having a vbeat =
100kHz sampled for 1 second.

I'm familiar with the loose and tight phase-locked methods of measuring
phase noise, but am quite curious to know if phase noise from a DMTD
measurement is a valid assumption.

I would guess that if the frequency domain phase noise measurement
requires
phase-lock then the time-domain measurement requires as well. However,
here
in lies my real interest - two GPSDOs are phase-locked (not to 1Hz,
something far less I know) so can it be possible to measure GPSDO Adev
and
phase-noise using a single DMTD run? Am I making a wrong assumption
somewhere?



An architecture not completely different to the DMTD architecture is used
in phase-noise kits. Instead of having two sources and one intermediary
oscillator is instead there one source and two intermediary oscillators.
The
oscillators is locked to the carrier frequency rather than an offset. The
mixed down signal is then cross-correlated to get the spectrum.
Increasing
the averaging factor and the spectrum can be suppressed below that of the
intermediary oscillators. Since the two intermediary oscillators have
uncorrelated noise, the external noise is what correlates over time. This
technique is simply called cross-correlation. Such a cross-correlation
setup
can run very close to the carrier in terms of offsets.

In contrast will a DMTD with it's offset frequency be problematic at low
offsets since the positive and negative offsets noise will not occur at
the
same frequency in a DMTD setup. Consider a a DMTD with a 10 Hz offset,
pointing a spectrum analyzer on 100 Hz will measure the down-converted
average of carrier+(100-10) Hz and carrier-(100+10) Hz, thus carrier+90
Hz
and carrier-110 Hz.

Creating a mixed-mode setup for phase-noise/DMTD will however be
possible.

So, DMTD as such is relatively limited, but add an RF switch and another
oscillator and you get a cross-correlation phase-noise kit.

To turbo-charge the phase-noise kit use a quadrature combiner and
amplitude
adjustment to create a interferometric mixdown, working around part of
the
mixer limitations. Enrico Rubiola has writen about this approach.

Cheers,
Magnus


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