Test set speeds oscillator calibration

A Temex product story

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team May 15, 2003

Temex has developed a low-cost, portable, picosecond-resolution test kit to significantly reduce the time and effort taken to accurately calibrate reference sources.

Temex has developed a low-cost, portable, picosecond-resolution test kit to significantly reduce the time and effort taken to accurately calibrate reference sources, such as crystal oscillators and atomic clocks, and to perform time interval error (TIE) measurements.

The new compact PicoTime test set includes HF hardware capable of processing timing measurements at 1ps resolution and Windows-based software to manage and access raw data from a standard PC RS232 serial interface.

The components can be seamlessly integrated into customer instrument systems as value-added OEM elements, to which third-party software can be added to provide full time and frequency management.

The new kit is designed to make a direct frequency measurement in comparison with an external 10MHz frequency reference.

PicoTime is based on a heterodyne system using direct digital synthesiser (DDS) technology to allow measurement in the range of up to 30MHz.

The external 10MHz reference divided by 2EXP7 is used to make time interval measurements each second.

The PicoTime test set is readily available.