[time-nuts] Method for comparing oscillators

Joseph M Gwinn gwinn at raytheon.com
Wed Aug 5 00:45:45 UTC 2009


Rex,


time-nuts-bounces at febo.com wrote on 08/04/2009 07:35:51 PM:

> From:
> 
> Rex <rexa at sonic.net>
> 
> To:
> 
> Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement 
<time-nuts at febo.com>
> 
> Date:
> 
> 08/04/2009 07:43 PM
> 
> Subject:
> 
> Re: [time-nuts] Method for comparing oscillators
> 
> Sent by:
> 
> time-nuts-bounces at febo.com
> 
> Bruce Griffiths wrote:
> 
> >Rex wrote:
> > 
> >
> >>Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
> >>
> >> 
> >>
> >>>In message
> >>><abec162c0908030758y62c9dffdq65f8341cd2bb84d1 at mail.gmail.com>, John
> >>>Green writes:
> >>>>I have studied the dual mixer approach and the consensus is that it
> >>>>is the
> >>>>most accurate method. However, it seems pretty difficult to
> obtain that
> >>>>accuracy.
> >>>Check the description and papers about Timing.com's way of doing it,
> >>>they
> >>>are quite clever.
> >>> 
> >>>
> >>Poul-Henning,
> >>
> >>Can you give a more specific reference to the documentation? I took a
> >>look around www.symmetricom.com/resources/ (where timing.com
> >>redirects) but it is not clear to me that anything I found describes
> >>their way of doing it.
> >> 
> >>
> >Rex
> >
> >Look at the TSC5115A and the TSC5120A (download and read the manuals)
> >plus the associated patents.
> >
> >Bruce
> >
> 
> Bruce,
> 
> Thanks, that looks interesting. I found the manual here...
> http://www.symmetricom.com/media/files/support/ttm/product-
> manual/5120A-MAN.pdf
> 
> But I haven't figured out where to get a list of related patents. Can 
> anyone provide key number(s) or point me to a list?

I dug this up a year or two ago.  It was not easy to find, but the main 
patent is US Patent 7,227,346 to Solbrig.  The patent text may be obtained 
from www.pat2pdf.org or Google Patents.

There may be another patent, but I don't know its number.

The main article was "Direct-Digital Phase-Noise Measurement", J. Grove, 
J. Hein, J. Retta, P. Schweiger, W. Solbrig, and S.R. Stein, 2004 IEEE 
International Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control Joint 
50th Anniversary Conference, pages 287-291, 
0-7803-8414-8/04/$20.00 (c)2004 IEEE.  Much of the text of this article 
also appears in an appendix to the 5120 manual.

Joe Gwinn



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