Characterisation and behaviour of comb phase-standards

David Humphreys1, Matthew Harper1, James Miall1, Dominique Schreurs2

1

National Physical Laboratory, Hampton Road, Teddington, Middlesex, TW11 0LW, UK david.humphreys@npl.co.uk 2 Katholieke Universiteit Leuven B-3001 Leuven, Belgi dominique.schreurs@esat.kuleuven.be

Introduction and motivation

Large-signal design, needed for power-efficient communication systems, is underpinned by accurate characterisation of active components. There are several different architectures for largesignal measurement systems. Our motivation is to provide traceability to the primary standard for dynamic electrical measurements so that the systems are equivalent under the same operating conditions. In this work we characterize two comb generator phase-standards based on different technologies and build on previous work carried out at NIST by considering a load-pull approach for the source impedance match correction.

Traceability path for Oscilloscopes and harmonic phase standards

NPL primary standard for timeresolved voltage V(t) realized by Electro-Optic Sampling (Pockels effect) 20 m-thick lithium tantalate probe, low-temperature GaAs coplanar line and pulse generator. 200 fs optical pulses at 80.4 MHz (850 nm/1500 nm). <1 ps electrical pulses on the coplanar line. V(t) measured by varying the relative delay between the optical and electrical pulses. Bandwidth > 600 GHz (coplanar line) 110 GHz (coaxial line). Maximum epoch 13 ns, minimum point spacing 9 fs. System has been compared with equivalents at NIST and PTB. Traceability disseminated through calibrated sampling oscilloscopes.
Impedance Match Corrections Timebase correction (hardware and software) Digital Sampling Oscilloscope (NPL or Customer equipment)

Phase standards
Device A: Based on a step-recovery diode and is specified to operate over an octave bandwidth 600 MHz 1200 MHz. The RF power level is monitored using an external RF power meter to ensure a reproducible operating point. Device B: A prototype based on a newer technology and operates over at a wider drive frequency range 100 MHz 1.25 GHz. RF power is internally levelled.

Polarisation rotation crosscorrelates the Electric optical fields

Electro-Optic Sampling system

Primary standard: 80.4 NHz xed frequency comb, 1 ps width

Route depends on the system

Measurement systems
Direct measurement to achieve the highest accuracy. Maximum DSO trace (100 k samples) allows high-resolution time-corrected measurements over >100 ns epoch. Two 70 GHz DSOs (different manufacturers) used. In-phase and Quadrature (IQ) timebase correction to compensate for timebase nonlinearity and jitter. < 500 fs rms residual jitter in the timebase corrected signal. IQ frequency selected so that no intermodulation product falls on a comb line. Load-pull measurements determine match and verify linear behaviour. Impedance match measurements of test system (and phase-standard).

Variable repetition rate (MHz to GHz) 5 ps to 30 ps pulse width Phase standard under test

Large-signal network analyser (customer instrument)

Traceability path for Nonlinear Vector Network Analyser systems

Direct measurement results

The two devices respond differently as a function of frequency and these differences are most clearly visible in the time-domain.
0 degrees Synthesizer 1 10 GHz lter Splitter CH2 20 GHz 90 degrees CH3 70 GHz CH1 20 GHz

Load-Pull and Impedance match

Performed on each of the phase-standards at a repetition rate of 800 MHz Interference signal was varied over 12 dB range covering the first forty comb lines (32 GHz). Both close to carrier and 10 MHz frequency offsets used. Zero frequency and offset frequency results, evaluated using Device B, agreed to within the 95% confidence interval. Nonlinear signal mixing products components expected at fcomb 10 MHz and fcomb 20 MHz. Both device A and device B show linear behaviour.
0 degrees Synthesizer 1 10 GHz lter Splitter 10 MHz Reference CH2 20 GHz Synthesizer 2 Phase standard under test Reference plane 2-50 GHz Directional Coupler 90 degrees CH3 70 GHz CH1 20 GHz

Synthesizer 2

Phase standard under test

10 dB attenuator

CH4 20 GHz

Synthesizer 3

CH4 20 GHz

Reference plane

Digital Sampling Oscilloscope

10 dB attenuator

Direct measurement system

1-40 GHz Directional Coupler

Digital Sampling Oscilloscope

Device A: Significant variation of the pulse amplitude and shape with drive frequency. Pulse-shape sensitivity with RF drive-power. Manual RF power levelling gives a residual uncertainty due to power meter calibration and setting accuracy. Interpolation by parametric fitting to the harmonic data components is appropriate for this design.

Load-pull measurement system

Device A: Waveform varies with frequency

Device A: Waveform shape varies with RF drive power

Device B: Load-pull signals at 29.7 GHz. Slow phase variation 63 mRad/sec during measurement to give good coverage.

Device B: Load-pull signals at 10 MHz offset

Device B: Pulse-shape appears to be weakly dependent on the repetition rate. The RF power is internally levelled - no additional uncertainty contributions. Interpolation of the response at different repetition rates should be possible. A single curve fitted to all the complex frequency components will simplify modelling.

Conclusions
Source match correction is essential to achieve low phase-uncertainty. Timebase and jitter correction is essential to achieve < 500 fs variation over a time epoch of 200 ns with a point spacing of 2 ps. Trigger jitter degrades the results at low repetition rates <100 MHz. Predicting the phase-standard response over a range of drive frequencies should be possible but the model will depend on the phase-standard technology. Both phase-standards behave linearly under low-level load-pull signal injection. This may allow the measurement system to be further simplified.
9803/0911 Queens Printer and Controller of HMSO, 2011.

Acknowledgments
The NPL authors thank the industrial and academic collaborators in this project for their advice and the loan of phase-standard devices. The NPL authors would like to thank the BIS National Measurement Office for financial support under the Physical Metrology programme.
Device B: Time-domain waveform shape unaffected be repetition rate Device B: Normalised signal components unaffected by repetition rate

The NPL Authors thank LeCroy for the loan of two 20 GHz sampling heads.

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