[time-nuts] What is a Time-Nut grade Zero Crossing Circuit?
Bruce Griffiths
bruce.griffiths at xtra.co.nz
Thu Jul 31 04:58:16 EDT 2008
SAIDJACK at aol.com wrote:
> Hi Bruce,
>
> that would work too. We get <330fs jitter rms with this circuit using the
> Fairchild UHS LVC family, that's pretty much the noise floor of the OCXO :)
>
> If you use a bias network, you won't get 50% symmetry since it will never
> perfectly match the inverter's inflection point (which changes with temp etc),
> and you may insert noise from the power supply. With the feedback resistor it
> will operation at the inversion point without adding power supply noise.
>
> bye,
> Said
>
>
>
Yes, however it is quieter and adding duty cycle stabilisation feedback
fixes that problem.
For even lower noise, bandpass filter the OCXO output (a crystal filter
is particularly effective).
Its not too difficult to drop the noise floor to a few tens of femtosec.
The drawbacks being the cost, and the need to regulate the bandpass
filter temperature to minimise phase shift variations with ambient
temperature.
You would also need to use a quieter clock driver.
It may even be necessary to use a well designed bandpass limiter to
increase the signal zero crossing slew rate before using a 6GHz
bandwidth clock driver.
However the cost and complexity probably isnt justified when driving an
FPGA which may have tens of picoseconds of jitter.
Bruce
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