[time-nuts] Comparing PPS from 2 GPS units

David davidwhess at gmail.com
Mon Dec 17 18:56:21 UTC 2012


On Mon, 17 Dec 2012 10:19:43 -0800, Hal Murray
<hmurray at megapathdsl.net> wrote:

>
>> A fifth solution is to use a pulse delay generator like a DG535. I use this
>> to create high-resolution early/late 1PPS sync pulses. They show up on eBay,
>> but aren't cheap. For bargains, watch for older model programmable pulse
>> delay generators by BNC (Berkeley Nucleonics Corporation).
>
>Thanks.  Those are more $$$ than I'm interested in right now, but might be a 
>useful tool sometime in the future.
>
>Another approach is to use a scope: trigger on one PPS and adjust the delay 
>(which might be negative) and sweep speed so you can see the other PPS 
>signal.  Maybe I'll play with this to see what sort of results I can get.
>
>
>> Lastly, there are cute little delay boxes (www.ebay.com/itm/150962422699)
>> that might work. Not sure how stable they are at the ns level. But it would
>> be fun to measure. If someone opens one of these please tell us if it's a
>> coil of wire, some kind of LRC filter delay, or if they use those Dallas
>> delay chips. Which is another solution for you -- google or eBay search for:
>> silicon delay line. 
>
>You can make a reasonable delay line by using the lumped circuit 
>approximation for the L and C for the appropriate impedance transmission 
>line.  I assume that's what's in the delay boxes.  I should try that 
>sometime.  Thanks for the reminder.
>
>The delay chips I've looked at before used gate delays.  I think they were 
>Motorola rather than Dallas.  I just poked at a few Maxim data sheets.  I 
>didn't find out how they implemented the delays.
>
>I think some of the clock recovery chips tune delays by tweaking the 
>threshold voltage.

I have been testing just using adjustable RC delays into a logic gate
to generate pretrigger pulses for sampling oscilloscopes.  Accuracy
depends on a complete reset of the capacitor and tracking between the
RC charge voltage and gate threshold voltage.  Worst cast jitter for
TTL has been in the 100s of picoseconds range because of supply
voltage sensitivity.  Different families of TTL and CMOS logic all
performed about the same.

Here is the jitter measurement that came from the RC logic gate delay
test:

http://www.banishedsouls.org/c2df3757f1/PG506/PDJ%20lolcat.jpg

Much better is to use a differential comparator or differential input
ECL which solves the threshold variation errors and a fast (it really
isn't all that fast) ramp generator with a precision reset.  The
differential input allows the ramp rate and threshold voltage to be
linked allowing ratiometric operation to reject power supply or
reference voltage variation and noise.

My next pretrigger generator is going the differential comparator or
differential ECL route with a fast ramp and precision reset.  I expect
jitter to be significantly better than 10s of picoseconds for delays
up to about 100 nanoseconds.  If I get down to 10 picoseconds of
jitter, I will be happy since I have no real way to measure much below
that.



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