[time-nuts] 10 MHz over optical fiber?

[Paul Boven]

Hi everyone,

In message <20081124152247.DCDB0E91529 at mail.ebirds.it>, Marco IK1ODO -2
writes:
>Hi all,
>
>I have to carry a 10 MHz standard frequency signal inside an EMC 
>screened room via fiber optic cable.
>
>Not willing to re-invent the wheel, do something like an optical 
>standard frequency link exist on the market?
>I think it is possible to use standard 100MB LAN transceivers, and 
>POF. Phase noise requirements
>are not very stringent, and the distance is in the order of some tens 
>of meters.

I'm looking into something similar: transmitting an H-Maser signal
(probably 10MHz) over some 34km using CWDM SFPs. At first glance this
seems fairly uncomplicated: get some SFPs, and SFP connector + cage. Use
a fast opamp/differential driver to drive the transmitting SFP, and use
a similar setup at the other end to transform the received data back to
50 ohm unbalanced. How feasible would such a setup be?
Possible problems might be that a 10MHz squarewave is simply too 'slow'
to be transmitted by an SFP, which expects 1.25Gb/s 8/10 encoded data.
Another interesting question would be how much jitter/noise such a setup
would add?

Regards, Paul Boven.