Measurement of the Short-Term Stability of Quartz Crystal Resonators and the Implications for Crystal Oscillator Design and Applications

A new technique is presented which makes it possible to measure the inherent short-term stability of quartz crystal resonators in a passive circuit. Comparisons with stability measurements made on crystal controlled oscillators indicate that noise in the electronics of the oscillators very seriously degrades the inherent stability of the quartz resonators for times less than 1 s. A simple model appears to describe the noise mechanism in crystal controlled oscillators and points the way to design changes which should improve their short-term stability by two orders of magnitude. Calculations are outlined which show that with this improved short-term stability it should be feasible to multiply a crystal controlled source to 1 THz and obtain a linewidth of less than 1 Hz. In many cases, this improved short-term stability should also permit a factor of 100 reduction in the length of time necessary to achieve a given level of accuracy in frequency measurements.