[time-nuts] AM vs PM noise of signal sources

Dana Whitlow k8yumdoober at gmail.com
Sat Jan 6 21:12:16 EST 2018


One point about oscillator design I've not yet seen mentioned is this: the
limiter
must not degrade the resonator Q when in action.  Hence, a pair of diodes
connected in parallel back to back, across a shunt resonator, would be a bad
thing to do from the perspective of low phase noise. A differential
amplifier
that limits by running out of current on peaks, driving a shunt resonator,
is
a much better way even though one pays a price in having more transistor
noise in the circuit.

I've long wondered if a very slow AGC might avoid the nonlinear mechanisms
issue except, of course, for things happening within the AGC loop's
bandwidth.
Is anybody reading this aware of what the truth really is?

Dana


On Sat, Jan 6, 2018 at 4:29 PM, Magnus Danielson <magnus at rubidium.dyndns.org
> wrote:

>
>
> On 01/06/2018 10:31 PM, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
> >> ------------------------------
> >>
> >> Message: 2
> >> Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2018 09:19:31 -0500
> >> From: Bob kb8tq <kb8tq at n1k.org>
> >> To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
> >>      <time-nuts at febo.com>
> >> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] AM vs PM noise of signal sources
> >> Message-ID: <DDEF34DD-AD21-44C6-9612-D877881078E5 at n1k.org>
> >> Content-Type: text/plain;    charset=utf-8
> >>
> >> Hi
> >>
> >> The key point missing is the fact that any real oscillator must have
> >> a limiter
> >> in the loop. Otherwise it will “create one” by going over the max
> >> output of this or
> >> that amplifier. To the degree that the limiter has issues (limits
> >> poorly) you will get
> >> AM noise.
> >
> > Hmm.  Not strictly true.  One can also use an AGC loop, like a wein
> > bridge oscillator.  That said, some kind of softish limiter is commonly
> > used.
>
> Regardless what non-linear mechanism in play, this remains a non-linear
> mechanism that achieves the goal. Choose wisely.
>
> Cheers,
> Magnus
> _______________________________________________
> 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