[time-nuts] GPSDO Alternatives

SAIDJACK at aol.com SAIDJACK at aol.com
Fri Dec 7 01:22:58 UTC 2012


David,
 
The NXP LPC932 processor series are very cheap and small, and we got very  
excited to see timers running at up to 32MHz internally if I remember  
correctly.
 
Then setting up a test system we noted that the timer can capture with  
32MHz resolution which is good enough for a low-cost GPSDO implementation, but  
that they gated the input pin through a flip-flop running at CPU core 
speed,  which was around 6MHz if I remember correctly.
 
DAAHHHH. So all that fast timer resolution goes out the door by gating the  
input pin instead of using non-gated inputs for the timer functions.
 
It does work however, in the end we made that processor do the chores in  
our quite old and discontinued FireFox GPSDO circuit. TVB has some plots  on 
his website for that unit I think, and its quite surprising what type of  
stability we achieved with that little 8 bit bugger back then.
 
bye,
Said
 
 
In a message dated 12/6/2012 16:00:27 Pacific Standard Time,  
davidwhess at gmail.com writes:

You can  use the ATmega328 16 bit timer/counter in input capture mode
to count the  number of 10 MHz OCXO cycles per pulse per second period
to a resolution of  100ns but there are some problems:

The ATmega328 16 bit timer/counter  external clock is limited to 1/4 of
the CPU frequency with an asynchronous  source so the 10 MHz OCXO would
need to be divided down which would further  limit performance and
require an external divider.  Modifying the  Aruino board to use the 10
MHz OCXO in place of the CPU clock solves that  problem.

Then operating the counter/timer in input capture mode with  the GPS
pulse per second signal connected to the input capture pin would  allow
almost Shera like performance.  The timing resolution would be  2.4
times lower (and not asynchronous) limiting performance over  short
time spans.



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