[time-nuts] 10811 Extra Lagging etc

[Tom Clark, K3IO]

   TVB noted:

If you are using the 10811 as part of a GPSDO the PLL
should take care of any number of slow-moving changes
in frequency; whether it's temperature, humidity, voltage,
OCXO ageing, DAC drift, phase-of-the-moon, etc.

So I don't see a compelling need to "protect" the OCXO
in the ways being proposed.

If you are in a harsh, or fast-changing environment then
do the math to see if your OCXO dF/dt exceeds what the
PLL can close relative to the dF/dt of the GPS reference.
  

   There are several elements of the GPSDO that can have sever
   temperature sensitivity:
    1. The GPS receiver itself. Of particular concern is the group delay
       thru the ~2 MHz wide IF filters and also the several MHz wide
       filters in the RF front-end. The IF filters are often SAW (Surface
       Acoustic Wave) devices, and the RF  bandpass filters are
       frequently coaxial ceramic devices (functionally similar to tuned
       cavities, but built inside high dielectric constant ceramic). I
       have seen tempco's of as much as a few nsec/ºC for some brands of
       receiver boards.
    2. The GPS antenna. Most systems employ patch antennas which are
       manufactured with ceramic dielectric loading of the patch
       elements. Since these are located outdoors, they can see several
       tens ºC temperature swing throughout a day.
    3. Most GPSDOs use a fairly long divider to bring the standard
       oscillator down from 10 MHz to 1 PPS. If you use ripple counters
       for these dividers, they will show a significant temperature
       sensitivity. I once used a string of 3½ 74HC390's to bring 10 MHz
       down to 1PPS and was appalled to find several hundred nsec of
       delay change with ambient temperature in a trailer. But when you
       realize that 7 BCD counters with 4 flip-flops each account for
       something like 72 CMOS gates, each with a tempco ~1 ns/ºC, the
       results were not surprising. The moral to this story is that the
       counters in your GPSDO should be synchronous counters. Better
       still, I found that TVB's single chip PIC divider had unmeasurable
       temperature effects.

   I would be surprised if you find a significant humidity or pressure
   pull unless you have a problem with moisture condensing on some
   component; the dielectric constant of liquid water (or ice) differs
   significantly from unity!
   73, Tom