[time-nuts] No State Of The Art Counter

[Bruce Griffiths]

Gerhard

See:
http://www.sdrforum.org/pages/sdr06/sdr06_papers/1.3/1.3-01.pdf
for an ultra low phase noise dds technique.

Bruce

Gerhard Hoffmann wrote:
> Am 06.01.2011 20:02, schrieb Tijd Dingen:
>> Also note the glaring lack of a prescaler. This can and will be added 
>> at a later date to extend the range of the counter. For now I just 
>> want to get the basics working properly first. On the subject of 
>> prescalers, does anyone know where to order Hittite parts in low 
>> quantities? I noticed on hittite.com you can place an order but if I 
>> understand correctly that is only for 10+. Which is probably great if 
>> you do a group buy, but not if I want to try out 3 of those, 2 of 
>> those, etc...
> I was thinking about abusing the built-in SERDES-Units in the Spartan6 
> as a prescaler. It would
> be necessary to sort out the transitions after the 1:16 gearbox, but 
> given the amount of logic in a Spartan6
> that should be possible. While I have not seriously tried that, I have 
> spotted no show stopper
> in the data sheet.
> The SERDES units are used for PCI-express, USB3 or fiber optic links 
> otherwise.
> It should be possible to reach 3 or 4 GHz.
>
>> Another question for those that have already done this ... suppose 
>> you have a "good" 10 MHz (OCXO, GPSDO, WhateverO) and want to use 
>> that for your reference counter. What is a reasonable low cost method 
>> to end up with a 200 MHz clock in a spartan-3e and a 500 MHz clock in 
>> a spartan-6? I am currently using the fpga's internal dcm but the 
>> added jitter is considerable.
> I would/will use a 100 MHz VCXO locked to a 10 MHz ref and multiply 
> from then on. That is less ado
> than multiplying from 10 MHz up if you want low wideband PN and low 
> reference harmonics.
>
> Still looking for nice SAW filters for interesting frequencies to get 
> repeatable no-tune performance.
> There is a nice 400 MHz one from ECS/Digikey but I could not tune it 
> on the VNA to give
> reasonable loss/shape. :-(
>
>
> The system I'm contemplating is more like a SDR with the new 16 bit 
> 200/250MHz ADC
> from Analog Devices on a mezzanine card stacked on a SP605.
> Maybe even averaging 4 ADCs  to increase the dynamic range.
> One idea for the SDR would be to lock a sine from a clean 64 bit NCO  
> :-) to
> a received carrier in a tight PLL and directly demodulate/measure 
> phase noise or ADEV
>
> There are so many interesting things one could do w/o a daytime job.
>
>
> While I'm at it:
> I have written a technology-independend sine table and a DDS in VHDL.
> I.E. no XBLOX or other silicon vendor stuff that compiles nicely to 
> block rams and adders/muxes
> for Spartan6.
> It is estimated by the ISE tools to run at 245 MHz for 16 bit phase 
> and 18 bit amplitude resolution
> for sin and cos.
>
> Assumed, there is an ideal clock that goes into a numeric oscillator:
>
> Is there a formula or algorithm that gives guaranteed phase noise / spurs
> for the generated sine wave @ arbitrary frequencies, phase- and amplitude
> resolution?
>
>
> regards, Gerhard
>
>
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