Hi Taka, On 2020-02-20 19:40, Taka Kamiya via time-nuts wrote: > I have a question concerning frequency standard and their Allen deviation. > (to measure Allen Dev in frequency mode using TimeLab) > > It is commonly said that for shorter tau measurement, I'd need OCXO because > it's short tau jitter is superior to just about anything else. Also, it is > said that for longer tau measurement, I'd need something like Rb or Cs which > has superior stability over longer term. Seems reasonably correct. > Here's the question part. A frequency counter that measures DUT basically > puts out a reading every second during the measurement. When TimeLab is well > into 1000s or so, it is still reading every second; it does not change the > gate time to say, 1000s. > That being the case, why this consensus of what time source to use for what > tau? > I recall reading on TICC, in time interval mode, anything that's reasonably > good is good enough. I'm aware TI mode and Freq mode is entirely different, > but it is the same in fact that measurement is made for very short time span > AT A TIME. > I'm still trying to wrap my small head around this.
OK. I can understand that this is confusing. You are not alone being confused about it, so don't worry. As you measure frequency, you "count" a number of cycles over some time, hence the name frequency counter. The number of periods (sometimes called events) over the observation time (also known as time-base or tau) can be used to estimate frequency like this: f = events / time while it is practical that average period time becomes t = time / events In modern counters (that is starting from early 70thies) we can interpolate time to achieve better time-resolution for the integer number of events. This is all nice and dandy, but now consider that the start and stop events is rather represented by time-stamps in some clock x, such that for the measurements we have time = x_stop - x_start This does not really change anything for the measurements, but it helps to bridge over to the measurement of Allan deviation for multiple tau. It turns out that trying to build a standard deviation for the estimated frequency becomes hard, so that is why a more indirect method had to be applied, but the Allan deviation fills the role of the standard deviation for the frequency estimation of two phase-samples being the time-base time tau inbetween. As we now combine the counters noise-floor with that of the reference, the Allan deviation plots provide a slopes of different directions due to different noises. At the lowest point on the curve, is where the least deviation of frequency measurement occurs. Due to the characteristics of a crystal oscillator to that of the rubidium, cesium or hydrogen maser, the lowest point occurs at different taus, and provide different values. Lowest value is better, so there is where I should select the time-base for my frequency measurement. So, this may be at 10 s, 100 s or 1000 s, which means that the frequency measurement should be using start and stop measurements with that distance. OK, fine. So what about TimeLab in all this. Well, as we measure with a TIC we collect a bunch of phase-samples at some base rate, such as 10 Hz or whatever. TimeLab and other tools can then use this to calculate Allan Deviation for a number of different taus simply by using three samples, these being tau in between and algoritmically do that for different taus. One then collects a number of such measurements to form an average, the more, the better confidence interval we can but on the Allan Deviation estimation, but it does not improve our frequency estimation, just our estimation of uncertainty for that frequency estimation for that tau. Once you have that Allan Deviation plot, you can establish the lowest point and then only need two phase samples to estimate frequency. So, the measurement per second thing is more collection of data rather than frequency estimation in itself. Cheers, Magnus _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@lists.febo.com To unsubscribe, go to http://lists.febo.com/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts_lists.febo.com and follow the instructions there.
