Composite clock including a Cs clock, an H-maser clock, and a voltage-controlled oscillator

Cedric Plantard; Papa Mamadou Mbaye; François Vernotte

doi:10.1109/TUFFC.2010.1468

Composite clock including a Cs clock, an H-maser clock, and a voltage-controlled oscillator

IEEE Trans Ultrason Ferroelectr Freq Control. 2010 Mar;57(3):707-13. doi: 10.1109/TUFFC.2010.1468.

Authors

Cedric Plantard¹, Papa Mamadou Mbaye, François Vernotte

Affiliation

¹ UTINAM-UMR Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique/Université de Franche Comté 6213, Besançon Observatory, Besançon, France. [email protected]

PMID: 20211791
DOI: 10.1109/TUFFC.2010.1468

Abstract

This article presents the project of creating a composite clock, the advances in its realization and the technical choices. The goal is to generate an output signal which combines the advantages of each clock, the long-term stability for the cesium clock, the mid-term stability for the hydrogen maser clock, and the short-term stability for the voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO). The control system is designed to transfer the stability of the best clock at a given averaging time to the VCO. This system is designed to reach a relative instability of approximately 10(-14) at 1 s, 10(-15) at 10(3) s, and 10(-14) at 10(6) s at 100 MHz, depending on the stability of the master clocks. To make this composite clock, we use a digital PLL with 2 references.