[time-nuts] Help with TCXO

[Attila Kinali]

On Tue, 6 Dec 2011 21:47:24 +0100
Azelio Boriani <azelio.boriani at screen.it> wrote:

> I have read about the two main delay line techniques: the vernier delay
> line and the tapped delay line. These require a sort of on-the-fly
> calibration virtually for every sample you get because of the temperature
> and power supply dependency of the delay itself. Presently my
> time-to-digital converter has a 2.5nS resolution made only by counters,
> based on a 100MHz clock and on the capabilities of the Digital Clock
> Manager in the Spartan3 XC3S50 FPGA. In your opinion what resolution can I
> get from a Spartan3 (without any calibration) using delay lines? I have to
> learn how to manage delay lines and how to direct their placement for
> time-nut purposes.

Google for [1]. Wu et al reports that he was able to get to <60ps RMS
uncalibrated on a Cyclone II chip (which is quite old and slow).
Calibrated it was in the range of 10-25ps RMS (depending on the
exact architecture).

In [2] Qi et al "verify" the result from [1] and get to 20ps RMS with
30ps RMS worst case. Unfortunately, they don't write which FPGA they used.
(At least i couldnt find it just now)

			Attila Kinali

[1] The lO-ps Wave Union TDC: Improving FPGA TDC Resolution
beyond Its Cell Delay, Jinyuan Wu and Zonghan Shi, 
2008 IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium Conference 

[2] A 20ps Resolution Wave Union FPGA TDC with On-Chip Real
Time Correction, Ji Qi, Zhi Deng, Hui Gong, Yinong Liu



-- 
Why does it take years to find the answers to
the questions one should have asked long ago?