Precise three-channel integrated time counter

Author

Szplet, Ryszard ; Kwiatkowski, Pawel ; Jachna, Zbigniew ; Rozyc, Krzysztof

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electron., Mil. Univ. of Technol., Warsaw, Poland

fYear

2015

fDate

12-16 April 2015

Firstpage

575

Lastpage

578

Abstract

We present a design, FPGA-based implementation and test results of a new three-channel time interval counter developed for a project called Legal Time Distribution System (LTDS). The main aim of the counter is to gather information about time drift of clocks involved into the LTDS, then to evaluate their stability, and finally to select the most stable one as a local clock. The counter provides a high measurement precision (<; 15 ps) and wide range (> 1s) that are obtained by combining period counting with two-stage time interpolation. The time counter is implemented in a universally available and relatively cheap programmable device from family Spartan-6 (Xilinx).

Keywords

atomic clocks; field programmable gate arrays; interpolation; FPGA-based implementation; Legal Time Distribution System; Spartan-6; clocks; measurement precision; three-channel time interval counter; two-stage time interpolation; Clocks; Field programmable gate arrays; Interpolation; Radiation detectors; Registers; Synchronization; multichannel time counter; programmable device; time-to-digital converter; two-stage interpolation;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Frequency Control Symposium & the European Frequency and Time Forum (FCS), 2015 Joint Conference of the IEEE International

Conference_Location

Denver, CO

Print_ISBN

978-1-4799-8865-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/FCS.2015.7138910

Filename

7138910