[time-nuts] ensemble oscillators for better stability

DaveH info at blackmountainforge.com
Sun Dec 30 04:40:09 UTC 2012


I know that this is not germane but I keep thinking of this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqFc4wriBvE

32 mechanical metronomes on a moveable floor. They all sync up in a bit more
than two minutes.

Dave

> -----Original Message-----
> From: time-nuts-bounces at febo.com 
> [mailto:time-nuts-bounces at febo.com] On Behalf Of Tom Van Baak
> Sent: Saturday, December 29, 2012 20:17
> To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] ensemble oscillators for better stability
> 
> >> 1) This was a topic some years back -- for internal use, hp tightly
> >>    combined multiple 10811 oscillators so that the net 
> phase noise or
> >>    short-term performance was significantly better than 
> any one of the
> >>    constituent oscillators.
> > 
> > Care to share a reference on that? It would be interesting 
> to see how 
> > they did it and how well they where doing it.
> 
> Magnus,
> 
> Yes, it came up in a long thread called "GPS noise reduction" 
> back in April 2008. I'll mention it again  -- when I visited 
> the HP facility in Santa Clara years ago I saw or was told 
> about a special low noise 10 MHz reference that was used to 
> measure the phase noise of shipping 10811 oscillators. The 
> reference itself was a set of several hand-picked 10811's 
> that were combined in some clever way so that they all 
> steered themselves creating a coherent single output with 
> significantly lower noise than any one individual 10811. I 
> don't have further details but assume the RF and PLL experts 
> here on the list can figure out what is meant by this and 
> propose a paper design. It was probably more than 2 
> oscillators, but I don't remember now if it was 3 or 6 or 
> more. Rick Karlquist may also know about this system; either 
> when/how it was built or what level of performance it delivered.
> 
> /tvb
> 
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
> To unsubscribe, go to 
> https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
> and follow the instructions there.




More information about the time-nuts mailing list