[time-nuts] Assessing performance of a frequency counter

[Erik Kaashoek]

Hi all time-nuts.
Hopefully one of you can provide some advice on how to proceed.
The ambition is to assess the short term (less than 1 hour) performance 
of a frequency counter.
As I understood this can be done by plotting the Allan Deviation of a 
repeated measurement of a very stable source.
Below plot shows the Allan deviation of a 1 hour measurement of the 
10MHz output of an OCXO versus the internal reference of the counter 
with a 1 and 0.1 second gate time.
To be able to better see the gate time impact, short measurements with a 
gate time of 0.05s and 5s have been added.
Temperature variations during the measurement have not been recorded but 
there where some more variations during the 1s gate time measurement.


Are there any conclusions to draw from this plot?
Or should I do a different measurement, or use different representation?
A pointer to a web page or document describing how to do this type of 
assessment would be most welcome.
Erik.