[time-nuts] Re: Phase Station 53100A Questions

[Bob kb8tq]

Hi

I think you may be heading a bit off track digging into the 5120. The
53100a has a very different “heritage” than the TSC gear. The 5330 
“TimePod” would be a better thing to dig into to see its history. I’m
guessing 52100A is a typo. 

The .TIM files are generated by TimeLab so that’s a good place to look
for grubby details of this or that. They are “just” text files with a lot of 
embeded comments that document what’s what on each line.  Maybe
not *quite* a “just read it and it all makes sense”, but there is a lot of 
information in the file itself. I would suggest starting by reading through 
the file that TimeLab puts out. 

Bob

> On Feb 9, 2022, at 1:43 PM, Joseph Gwinn <joegwinn at comcast.net> wrote:
> 
> I will be doing some residual phase noise tests in a month or so 
> using a 53100A Phase Noise Analyzer (not yet in hand), so I've been 
> studying the users manual and datasheet of the Microchip 52100A Phase 
> Noise Analyzer.  I do know the history, starting with Sam Stein 
> developing the Timing Solutions Corp (TSC) model 5120.
> 
> Anyway, some questions have arisen:  
> 
> 1.  Where is the ".TIM" file format documented?  Google fails here, 
> chasing after some other kinds of .TIM file unrelated to the 5120 and 
> descendants.  The 53100A users manual does not define the .TIM file 
> format, or say where to find it.
> 
> 2.  There will be some debugging required in my test setup, and it 
> would be very useful if I could independently demodulate the 
> Amplitude Modulation (AM) and Phase Modulation (PM) components of the 
> phase noise, and present the low-passed waveforms in voltage versus 
> time form.  Signals leaking in for other places may well be 
> recognizable by resemblance of the demodulated AM or PM baseband 
> waveform to other signals known to exist in the system under test.  I 
> was thinking that the TIM file may be a start.
> 
> 3.  Where are the fundamental Principles of Operation documented?  
> The best I've found so far is a pair of patents by Wayne Solbrig, 
> US7227346 (Two channel digital phase detector) and US7436166 (Direct 
> digital synthesizer producing a signal representing an amplitude of a 
> sine wave), both originally assigned to TSC, and now expired.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Joe Gwinn
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