[time-nuts] GPS-disciplining an ordinary VCXO?

Mark A. Haun haunma at keteu.org
Sun Sep 28 00:01:34 EDT 2014


In my quest to learn Verilog and get my hands dirty with
software-defined radio, I'm currently designing a direct-sampling
shortwave receiver.  This uses an 80-MSPS ADC, which requires a
low-phase-noise oscillator, e.g. Crystek CVHD-950 or Abracon ABLNO.  It
would be nice to have some provision for locking this oscillator to an
external reference, hence my question:

All of the amateur GPSDO designs I've seen are disciplining an OCXO.  I
understand this is easier because the excellent short-term accuracy of
the OCXO means the feedback can run slower, so even a 1 PPS signal can
be used.

I am wondering what sort of performance could be achieved by
disciplining my VCXO directly with a good GPS module.  I have a NEO-7N
(Ublox) with configurable timepulse up to 10 MHz.  Someone mentioned
that this is derived from 48 MHz, so jitter is reduced if you pick an
integer divisor.  That is fine, but I don't have a feel for what other
irregularities may be present in the timepulse output, and how they
would affect the performance.  I also don't know how to go about
designing a PLL loop filter.  I understand the goal is to marry the
long-term GPS stability with the short-term VCXO stability but all I
have is a phase-noise plot for the VCXO.  How do you know where to
split the difference?

It is not essential to the larger project, but what I am ideally going
for is 1 ppb frequency match between two ends of a radio link, and 1 ppb
stability over data symbol times.  That is, carrier stability of ~ 1/10
cycle at 10 MHz over one-second symbols.  (Channel coherence imposes
this limit.)  I know the experts here can tell me whether this is
impossible, totally doable, or somewhere in between!

Thanks,

Mark


More information about the time-nuts mailing list