[time-nuts] Zero dead time and average frequency estimation

[Magnus Danielson]

Bruce,

Bruce Griffiths wrote:
>>> There are some excellent papers on the subject; start with
>>> the one by Rubiola:
>>>
>>> < 
>>> http://www.femto-st.fr/~rubiola/pdf-articles/journal/2005rsi-hi-res-freq-counters.pdf 
>>> >
>>>
>>> There are additional papers (perhaps Bruce can locate them).
>>
>> In particular, there is one paper that corrects some mistakes of 
>> Rubiola, Australian if I remember correctly.
> Yes, the paper by Dawkins, McFerran and Luiten:
> http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F4318993%2F4318994%2F04319178.pdf%3Farnumber%3D4319178&authDecision=-203 
> <http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F4318993%2F4318994%2F04319178.pdf%3Farnumber%3D4319178&authDecision=-203> 

Yes, many thanks.

This article by J.J. Snyder, "An Ultra-High Resolution Frequency Meter", 
  FCS #35, is very useful:
http://www.ieee-uffc.org/main/publications/fcs/proceed/1981/s8110464.pdf

It describes an hardware implementation of a zero dead-time counter 
(crude!) implementing the algorithm. It performs the averaging in the 
way I described earlier. The above paper by Snyder is the inspiration to 
the original MDEV paper published in for the same conference and 
directly following:

David W. Allan and James A. Barnes, "A modified Allan Variance with 
increased oscillator characterization ability", FCS #35.
http://www.ieee-uffc.org/main/publications/fcs/proceed/1981/s8110470.pdf

 From the same conference exists a summary paper of Howe, Allan and 
Barnes on measurements, spending time on comparing over-lapping and 
non-overlapping estimators, effective use of data, DF/EDF, chi-square 
etc. etc.

Cheers,
Magnus