[time-nuts] GPS Disciplined TCXO

[Bob Camp]

Hi

> On Oct 24, 2015, at 5:43 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, Oct 23, 2015 at 11:08 PM, Nick Sayer via time-nuts
> <time-nuts at febo.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> On Oct 23, 2015, at 2:09 PM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> On Tue, Oct 20, 2015 at 8:53 PM, Bryan _ <bpl521 at outlook.com> wrote:
>>>> Saw this on the Hackaday site if anyone is interested.
>>>> https://hackaday.io/project/6872-gps-disciplined-tcxo
>>> 
>>> Will this design that uses the output of the DAC directly not run into
>>> problems with non-monotonicity and/or dead-zones in the DAC output?  I
>>> would expect a PLL to behave very poorly if there is any
>>> non-monotonicity in the least significant bit of the DAC.
>> 
>> The datasheet claims the DAC is inherently monotonic. It’s a $7 part, so I don’t have much reason to look sideways at that claim.
> 
> Indeed!  However, the spec sheet shows (e.g. figure 10) a differential
> non-linearity of 0.2 .. -0.2  LSB,  meaning that when the PLL makes a
> single step the result may be 20% greater or lower than expected,
> which probably isn't good for stability though not the PLL
> breaking-ness of a non-monotone response.
> 
>> That strikes me as familiar - a little like how Arduino fakes analog output by running PWM into an LPF.
> 
> It's a common technique, (it and ones like it) also used internally in
> high bit depth DACs.
> 
>> If you look at the AD5061 datasheet, there is unfortunately a relatively significant (to my eyes, at least) update glitch. I suppose it’s quick enough that the RC filter would get rid of most of it, but it is an extra noise source if you do it frequently, like you’re suggesting.
> 
> Ouch, that is a fairly substantial spike compared to 1lsb... it's
> short at least, but if you are only updating once a second I'd wonder
> if that would not have a measurable impact on stability.
> 
> A potential advantage of running at a constant high rate is that
> rather than taking the impact of that glitch once per second, the
> glitch happens constantly and so its effect can just be averaged out
> by the PLL.  (e.g. it becomes equivalent to just scaling the output
> voltage by its average effects).

Since the glitch energy changes with code and with transition direction, 
what happens in a a high update rate “dither” approach is that the glitches 
dominate the whole process. Effectively you have a “DC” component
that gets into the result from the glitches. 

Bob

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