[time-nuts] Digital Mixing with a BeagleBone Black and D Flip Flop

Bruce Griffiths bruce.griffiths at xtra.co.nz
Sun Oct 12 00:27:48 EDT 2014


Original thread on DDMTD in 2008:
https://www.febo.com/pipermail/time-nuts/2008-December/034955.html

Later comment on using a shift register to 
minimise metastability issues:
https://www.febo.com/pipermail/time-nuts/2011-August/058648.html

Bruce

On Sunday, October 12, 2014 12:14:27 AM Robert Darby wrote:
> Bob Camp,
> 
> Bob, Simon is talking about the sampler versus a true mixer.  This is
> the idea I asked you about some months ago when I asked about how 
the
> digital filter functions.  You were kind to explain the filter method in
> terms of  buckets. You are of course correct that the resolution is low,
> 100 ns for a 10 MHz DUT with a 10 Hz frequency offset but the hetrodyne
> factor takes the theoretical resolution to 100 fs.  That's not shabby
> for a very low cost DDMTD.  And of course, the actual noise floor will
> not be close to this but potentially it's better than a 5370 and a lot
> easier to maintain. :o)
> 
> Simon,
> 
> I have a 4 channel 1 ns tagger "working" but I can't successfully link
> the FTDI library to a c program so doing this in hardware looks far more
> attractive to me.  Here's how I see it at this point:
> 
> -- Objective:
> --        A four channel DDMTD with 44 bit time tags delivered over the
> USB port
> --        At least 100 Hz beat frquency on each channel
> --        The hardware is capable of much higher rates but increasing
> the beat frequency offset
> --            degrades resolution and realistically the device will
> probably be used at 5 or 10 Hz
> --
> -- Additional Hardware Required:
> --        A "wing" with three or five LTC6957-1 low phase noise buffers
> to convert sine inputs into
> --            high speed low-jitter square waves using LVPECL
> differential outputs
> --        Either an oscillator offset by the beat frequency or a DDS
> frequency generator
> --        A USB equipped computer
> --
> --Architecture
> --        Differential inputs are fed to the master clock, thence to the
> D flip-flops clocks
> --        Differential inputs for each channel are fed to the data
> inputs for each flip-flop
> --        The master clock drives a 44 bit counter which is common to
> all four channels
> --        Each channel has two independent counters, provisionally 14
> bit, designated high and low
> --        The low counter first establishes a low state without
> transitions i.e. it times out
> --        After the low counter times out, the flip-flop is armed
> --        The first high output at q resets and starts both high and low
> counters - whichever counts depends on whether q is high or low
> --        Every time the high and low counters match we store the 44 bit
> count; each new match replaces the previous one
> --        At some point (2^14 highs) the high counter will roll over -
> hopefully low will have stopped counting much earlier
> --        The highest stored match should meet the equal count criteria
> as described in the P. Moreira and I. Darwazeh paper
> --        Since there are four channels it will be necessary to
> multiplex the time tags into the fifo
> --        The multiplexer will add 1 bit per channel for one-hot channel
> id coding
> --        The 48 bits will clock into a 48 bit to 8 bit fifo thence to
> an 8 bit USB port
> 
> I believe you can have multiple points where the two counts match but I
> don't have any data to confirm that. I played with this in excel and
> when you feed it ones and zeros in a distribution that "looks" like the
> typical  output out of a digital sampler it is possible to get multiple
> matches.  My intention is to go with the last crossing and the scheme
> mentioned above does this rather trivially. Unless, of course, I'm
> missing something and I usually do.
> 
> I've got a Pipistrello board and it has the option of an asynchronous
> fifo USB interface; since I've already paid my dues on that I'll just
> use that code again.  The data rate is so low that snail mail would
> work.  The computer gets a series of time tags and your program has to
> pair up the channels to get the deltas.  Getting time tags lets you
> compare three or four devices simultaneously and facilitates
> three-cornered hat calculations.  I suspect that's a lot easier to say
> than do but we'll cross that bridge if we ever get there. Also time tags
> permit continuous sampling; there's no counter dead-time which I think
> can be an issue when it causes variable data sampling rates.
> 
> Bob Camp mention Collins low jitter hard limiters but I suspect that's
> much more of an issue on the very shallow slopes you see on 5 or 10 Hz
> mixer outputs.  The LTC6957 is probably overkill on 10 MHz inputs but I
> believe they're a tad better than a 74AC gate, but then again maybe not
> all that much better.  Lot more expensive.  Bob C discussed sine to
> square conversion in a recent post (IIRC) perhaps in connection with 5V
> to 3.3V conversion, and for a low cost solution the 74AC gate looks
> pretty good and they're easy to dead bug.
> 
> I'm out of spit. Later
> 
> bob
> 
> On 10/11/2014 9:17 PM, Bob Camp wrote:
> > Hi
> > 
> > Ok, a little more data:
> > 
> > You can hook your flip flop up as a sampler or as a full blown mixer.
> > Hooked up as a full blown mixer, you get the 20 MHz and 10 Hz signals.
> > You also get more resolution on the 10 Hz. Either way, the 10 Hz is still
> > a beat note. In the case of a sampler, the filter is there for edge
> > jitter.
> > 
> > With a sampler, your data is only modulo 100 ns. With a 100 ms beat 
note
> > period, you only get 1x10^-6 at best. That’s very different than what 
you
> > get with the same chip used as a mixer (or an XOR gate). The true 
mixer
> > connection gives you data the instant the edge changes. The sampler 
goes
> > to sleep and lets you know up to 100 ns later ...
> > 
> > Bob
> > 
> > On Oct 11, 2014, at 6:31 PM, Simon Marsh 
<subscriptions at burble.com> wrote:
> >> I (mostly) understand this when considering an analogue mixer, but 
I'm
> >> lost on whether there are any similar effects going on with a digital
> >> signal ?
> >> 
> >> TBH, I'm not really sure 'mixing' is the right phrase in the digital
> >> case, and my apologies if I got that wrong.
> >> 
> >> What's actually going on is sampling one (digital) signal at a rate 
close
> >> to the signal frequency. This gives a vernier effect and the result is a
> >> purely digital set of pulses at the beat frequency, aligned to when 
the


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