# Accurate(ish) frequency measurement

M

#### Michael Brown

Jan 1, 1970
0
I'm playing around with one of my projects at the moment, and what would be
nice is to have built-in frequency calibration. The project essentially
involves watching crystals to see how they age (and also is a fun experiment
as to how stable of an environment - thermal and voltage - I can make).
Which is probably only somewhat more interesting than watching paint dry to
most people Currently I can do this, but only with an annoying amount of
external equipment.

Currently, the board under test has a 4 MHz crystal oscillator as found in
the LT1016 datasheet. I would like to do fairly accurate frequency
measurements of this crystal against a rubidium reference 1 PPS source I
have access to (assumed to have at worst 5E-11 short term stability). I'd
ideally like to make measurements of the frequency at the 1E-8 level or
better. Since the board has a microcontroller on it, I would ideally like to
simply plug in the 1 PPS source and read out a frequency through a serial
cable.

The simple method - counting cycles - would sort of work. If I count the
output of the xtal oscillator for about 25 seconds I should get an error of
1 part in 10^8. But I'd like to make the measurement faster (for 'I doubt I
can hold everything stable for that long' reasons and because faster =
better) and ideally not simply limited in accuracy to how long I wait.

My plan is to make a slight variant on a TAC. The number of full XTAL cycles
in between the reference rising edges is obviously easy to measure. To
measure the part cycles, I was going to use the discharge time of a
capacitor. For the final part cycle: initially prepare the capacitor to ~1V,
start charging it (+5V -> resistor -> capacitor -> GND) on the rising edge
of the 1 PPS source, keep charging until the rising edge of the 4 MHz clock,
then discharge it through a much bigger resistor and count how many 4 MHz
cycles occur until it hits ~0.8V. There's a few complications to avoid
dropping or collecting extra cycles, but that's the basic idea. Also,
there's obviously non-linearity problems here but nothing a bit of
microcontroller time can't fix. A similar method will be used for measuring
the start partial cycle.

Since this is living on a double-sided PCB, using a much higher frequency
clock to measure things more accurately isn't too feasable. Another
alternative would be to simply go out and buy a nice TDC chip from somewhere
.... unfortunately obtaining one or two of these appears to be either
impossible or extremely expensive - neither of which are helped by the fact
that I'm in Australia.

The questions (finally!) are
1) Is this the sensible way to do it?
2) Slew rate and switching delay for the capacitor charging (and to a letter
degree, the discharging) circuit is obviously important. From a back of the
envelope calculation even a BC109 seems to be able to do the job, but that
seems too easy. A MOSFET + driver is mess that I'd rather avoid.
3) Any nasty hidden surprises in these types of circuits that I should keep
an eye out for when designing it?

S

#### Stanislaw Flatto

Jan 1, 1970
0
Michael said:
I'm playing around with one of my projects at the moment, and what would be
nice is to have built-in frequency calibration. The project essentially
involves watching crystals to see how they age (and also is a fun experiment
as to how stable of an environment - thermal and voltage - I can make).
Which is probably only somewhat more interesting than watching paint dry to
most people Currently I can do this, but only with an annoying amount of
external equipment.

Currently, the board under test has a 4 MHz crystal oscillator as found in
the LT1016 datasheet. I would like to do fairly accurate frequency
measurements of this crystal against a rubidium reference 1 PPS source I
have access to (assumed to have at worst 5E-11 short term stability). I'd
ideally like to make measurements of the frequency at the 1E-8 level or
better. Since the board has a microcontroller on it, I would ideally like to
simply plug in the 1 PPS source and read out a frequency through a serial
cable.

The simple method - counting cycles - would sort of work. If I count the
output of the xtal oscillator for about 25 seconds I should get an error of
1 part in 10^8. But I'd like to make the measurement faster (for 'I doubt I
can hold everything stable for that long' reasons and because faster =
better) and ideally not simply limited in accuracy to how long I wait.

My plan is to make a slight variant on a TAC. The number of full XTAL cycles
in between the reference rising edges is obviously easy to measure. To
measure the part cycles, I was going to use the discharge time of a
capacitor. For the final part cycle: initially prepare the capacitor to ~1V,
start charging it (+5V -> resistor -> capacitor -> GND) on the rising edge
of the 1 PPS source, keep charging until the rising edge of the 4 MHz clock,
then discharge it through a much bigger resistor and count how many 4 MHz
cycles occur until it hits ~0.8V. There's a few complications to avoid
dropping or collecting extra cycles, but that's the basic idea. Also,
there's obviously non-linearity problems here but nothing a bit of
microcontroller time can't fix. A similar method will be used for measuring
the start partial cycle.

Since this is living on a double-sided PCB, using a much higher frequency
clock to measure things more accurately isn't too feasable. Another
alternative would be to simply go out and buy a nice TDC chip from somewhere
... unfortunately obtaining one or two of these appears to be either
impossible or extremely expensive - neither of which are helped by the fact
that I'm in Australia.

The questions (finally!) are
1) Is this the sensible way to do it?
2) Slew rate and switching delay for the capacitor charging (and to a letter
degree, the discharging) circuit is obviously important. From a back of the
envelope calculation even a BC109 seems to be able to do the job, but that
seems too easy. A MOSFET + driver is mess that I'd rather avoid.
3) Any nasty hidden surprises in these types of circuits that I should keep
an eye out for when designing it?
You are in closed loop situation. Frequency IS 1/time so a reliable and
accurate reference to one of them is needed. It is obtained either by
measured certification of the source or by long term statistical
calculation.

Good hunting

Stanislaw

S

#### Stanislaw Flatto

Jan 1, 1970
0
Michael said:
The questions (finally!) are
1) Is this the sensible way to do it?
2) Slew rate and switching delay for the capacitor charging (and to a letter
degree, the discharging) circuit is obviously important. From a back of the
envelope calculation even a BC109 seems to be able to do the job, but that
seems too easy. A MOSFET + driver is mess that I'd rather avoid.
3) Any nasty hidden surprises in these types of circuits that I should keep
an eye out for when designing it?

Capacitors have a nasty habit, to arrive at charging/discharging level
to 1% accuracy you need ~ 3RC (time constants) or precise and fast
comparators.

Stanislaw.

J

#### jure

Jan 1, 1970
0
I'm playing around with one of my projects at the moment, and what would be
nice is to have built-in frequency calibration. The project essentially
involves watching crystals to see how they age (and also is a fun experiment
as to how stable of an environment - thermal and voltage - I can make).
Which is probably only somewhat more interesting than watching paint dry to
most people Currently I can do this, but only with an annoying amount of
external equipment.

Currently, the board under test has a 4 MHz crystal oscillator as found in
the LT1016 datasheet. I would like to do fairly accurate frequency
measurements of this crystal against a rubidium reference 1 PPS source I
have access to (assumed to have at worst 5E-11 short term stability). I'd
ideally like to make measurements of the frequency at the 1E-8 level or
better. Since the board has a microcontroller on it, I would ideally like to
simply plug in the 1 PPS source and read out a frequency through a serial
cable.

The simple method - counting cycles - would sort of work. If I count the
output of the xtal oscillator for about 25 seconds I should get an error of
1 part in 10^8. But I'd like to make the measurement faster (for 'I doubt I
can hold everything stable for that long' reasons and because faster =
better) and ideally not simply limited in accuracy to how long I wait.

My plan is to make a slight variant on a TAC. The number of full XTAL cycles
in between the reference rising edges is obviously easy to measure. To
measure the part cycles, I was going to use the discharge time of a
capacitor. For the final part cycle: initially prepare the capacitor to ~1V,
start charging it (+5V -> resistor -> capacitor -> GND) on the rising edge
of the 1 PPS source, keep charging until the rising edge of the 4 MHz clock,
then discharge it through a much bigger resistor and count how many 4 MHz
cycles occur until it hits ~0.8V. There's a few complications to avoid
dropping or collecting extra cycles, but that's the basic idea. Also,
there's obviously non-linearity problems here but nothing a bit of
microcontroller time can't fix. A similar method will be used for measuring
the start partial cycle.

Since this is living on a double-sided PCB, using a much higher frequency
clock to measure things more accurately isn't too feasable. Another
alternative would be to simply go out and buy a nice TDC chip from somewhere
... unfortunately obtaining one or two of these appears to be either
impossible or extremely expensive - neither of which are helped by the fact
that I'm in Australia.

The questions (finally!) are
1) Is this the sensible way to do it?
2) Slew rate and switching delay for the capacitor charging (and to a letter
degree, the discharging) circuit is obviously important. From a back of the
envelope calculation even a BC109 seems to be able to do the job, but that
seems too easy. A MOSFET + driver is mess that I'd rather avoid.
3) Any nasty hidden surprises in these types of circuits that I should keep
an eye out for when designing it?

Sounds interesting Michael ,

although you have to decide for yourself if it is worth the exercise.
You could improve better that 100x your single shot precision in 1
sec, using the TAC interpolators.
Certainly it may be quite a learning experience that could be applied
to other fields....

So, the situation is:

a) there is an accurate 1 Hz gate signal.
b) there is an unknown clock of frequency close to 4 MHz.
c) an interpolator will find Delta_T1 = the time from the active
edge of the gate to the next active edge of the unknown clock.
( Delta_T1 is in your case less than 25 ns )
d) a counter will count the integer number N of clock cycles
between the first active clock edge after the first active edge of the
gate,
and the first active edge of the clock after the last active
edge of the gate.
e) a second interpolator will find Delta_T2 = the time from the
2nd active edge of the gate to the next active edge of the unknown
clock.
( Delta_T2 is in your case less than 25 ns )

Note : here your case is a little easier than the more
general solution:
you stop the second interpolator after the counter
reaches N = 4 000 000

f) compute the time it took to run N = 4 000 000 complete cycles

T = 1 s + Delta_T2 - Delta_T1

then , the 1s averaged unknown frequency is: Fx = 4 000
000 / T

Extra Notes:

1) the interpolator is a gated constant current source charging a
capacitor ( => linear ramp voltage on C ), followed by a sample and
2) there could be one single interpolator , given that there is 1s
between its use for the gate start and gate stop ( and you have 1
second to: integrate , hold, convert , read ADC , reset ).
3) the system may be pipelined to get one frequency reading per
second, but you will need two interpolators.
4) I would stay with one interpolator, so that you will have to
calibrate only one of them , not two.
5) the interpolator(s) have to be calibrated so that the addition
above is meaningful, (how many ADC counts per Fx period are there ?)
5) all the logic , the counter and the state machine controlling the
system may be implemented in a fast CPLD.
6) the scheme presented above assumes that the unknown frequency is 4
MHz +/- 1Hz ( ie +/- one count in 1 s),
if not you could change the state machine so that the interpolators
span 2 or more clock cycles, then change everything else to match)

timing diagram ( see with fixed point courier ):

__________________... 1s ....
_____________
1s Gate signal | |
______| ....____|

____..
____..
Fx Clock |
|
..___| ..._|

->| |<- DT1 ->| |<-
DT2

Clock Edge # 0 Clock
Edge # N-1

Thanks , Jure Z.

J

#### jure

Jan 1, 1970
0
Sounds interesting Michael ,

although you have to decide for yourself if it is worth the exercise.
You could improve better that 100x your single shot precision in 1
sec, using the TAC interpolators.
Certainly it may be quite a learning experience that could be applied
to other fields....

So, the situation is:

a) there is an accurate 1 Hz gate signal.
b) there is an unknown clock of frequency close to 4 MHz.
c) an interpolator will find Delta_T1 = the time from the active
edge of the gate to the next active edge of the unknown clock.
( Delta_T1 is in your case less than 25 ns )
d) a counter will count the integer number N of clock cycles
between the first active clock edge after the first active edge of the
gate,
and the first active edge of the clock after the last active
edge of the gate.
e) a second interpolator will find Delta_T2 = the time from the
2nd active edge of the gate to the next active edge of the unknown
clock.
( Delta_T2 is in your case less than 25 ns )

Note : here your case is a little easier than the more
general solution:
you stop the second interpolator after the counter
reaches N = 4 000 000

f) compute the time it took to run N = 4 000 000 complete cycles

T = 1 s + Delta_T2 - Delta_T1

then , the 1s averaged unknown frequency is: Fx = 4 000
000 / T

Extra Notes:

1) the interpolator is a gated constant current source charging a
capacitor ( => linear ramp voltage on C ), followed by a sample and
2) there could be one single interpolator , given that there is 1s
between its use for the gate start and gate stop ( and you have 1
second to: integrate , hold, convert , read ADC , reset ).
3) the system may be pipelined to get one frequency reading per
second, but you will need two interpolators.
4) I would stay with one interpolator, so that you will have to
calibrate only one of them , not two.
5) the interpolator(s) have to be calibrated so that the addition
above is meaningful, (how many ADC counts per Fx period are there ?)
5) all the logic , the counter and the state machine controlling the
system may be implemented in a fast CPLD.
6) the scheme presented above assumes that the unknown frequency is 4
MHz +/- 1Hz ( ie +/- one count in 1 s),
if not you could change the state machine so that the interpolators
span 2 or more clock cycles, then change everything else to match)

timing diagram ( see with fixed point courier ):

__________________... 1s ....
_____________
1s Gate signal | |
______| ....____|

____..
____..
Fx Clock |
|
..___| ..._|

->| |<- DT1 ->| |<-
DT2

Clock Edge # 0 Clock
Edge # N-1

Thanks , Jure Z.

HI,

after one more minute of thinking,

the statement :

could be corrected adding that using one interpolator and producing
one reading per second is possible by using the Delta2 from the
previous measurement as Delta1 of the current measurement.

Jure Z.

J

#### jure

Jan 1, 1970
0
HI,

after one more minute of thinking,

the statement :

could be corrected adding that using one interpolator and producing
one reading per second is possible by using the Delta2 from the
previous measurement as Delta1 of the current measurement.

Jure Z.

noticed a mistake : wherever I said 25 ns , please read 250ns.

Jure Z.

M

#### Michael Brown

Jan 1, 1970
0
jure wrote:
[snip lots of good stuff]
could be corrected adding that using one interpolator and producing
one reading per second is possible by using the Delta2 from the
previous measurement as Delta1 of the current measurement.

Ahh, nice! Didn't think of that. I was planning to do the interpolator
calibration prior to the frequency measurement, but for a "continuous"
scheme like this it'd also work quite well to do it in the part of the 1
second interval that's not used for the measurement.

The approach I'm working with now is to simply latch the output of a counter
(fed with the 4 MHz clock) on each 1 PPS rising edge (more or less, with a
bit of logic to handle boundary cases) and then use the interpolator as you
described. With a bit more thought, I think (as you suggest) an ADC such as
the ADCS7476 will work better than the quasi-ADC that I was using (on the
better/easier). The microcontroller then handles the rest (counter
wrap-around, etc).

A question regarding the interpolator itself ... short term (5-second-ish)
stability-wise, would a constant voltage + resistor be better or worse than
a constant-current source? Stable voltage references are a dime a dozen
nowadays, but I'm not sure how well they'd work if you try running them in
constant current mode. The nonlinearity of using a constant voltage is not a
huge problem since it can be cleaned up by the microcontroller.

I'm still trying to decide on whether to go with discretes or a CPLD.
Unfortunately, CPLDs are only available down here in Australia with extreme
markups - the part I'm considering is a XC9536XL-5PC44 (one of the cheapest
flash-based CPLDs that I could find), which can be bought in single-piece
quantities from dozens of US places for ~$1.50, yet retails here for 10 times that. I can buy a LOT of 74AC discretes for$15. Additionally, I can't
find any CPLDs that can output 5V levels, which is what it's interfacing
with uses. Not impossible to deal with, just annoying, and requires yet
another voltage regulator to power it, or reconfiguration of the rest of the
circuit to 3.3V levels. Obviously, I'm currently leaning quite strongly
towards discretes ...

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