[time-nuts] synchronizing a large number of weakly coupled oscillators

Eugen Leitl eugen at leitl.org
Wed May 12 13:21:04 UTC 2010


On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 06:03:11AM -0700, jimlux wrote:
> Eugen Leitl wrote:
> >Has anyone utilized a network of locally, weakly coupled
> >oscillator synchronization (a la 
> >http://www.projectcomputing.com/resources/sync/index.html )
> >for precise timekeeping purposes?
> >
> There was a discussion on this list about doing something like filling a 
> cavern with pendulums in this connection a couple months ago.

I was thinking about a large population of freerunning oscillators
coupled via RF (e.g. digital pulse radio). Basically a bit like WiFi radios
in line of sight, talking to nearest neighbors.
 
> Bob York at UCSB and Ron Pogorzelski, a recently retired colleague of 
> mine at JPL, hav done a lot of work with coupled oscillator arrays. 
> They're used as a way to do phased array antennas.  googling "coupled 
> oscillator array" will turn up many hits.

Thank you -- very interesting.
 
> Allan had a paper where he had 8 inexpensive crystals coupled with 
> mixers and a microcontroller.  I think it's called the Clever 
> Temperature Compensated XO or something like that.

Presumably, a large population of cheap coupled oscillators could be
rather accurate collectively.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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