An RMS Digital Voltmeter/Calibrator for Very-Low Frequencies

A portable rms digital voltmeter (DVM) has been developed at NBS to support vibration measurements over the ranges of 0.1 to 50 Hz and 2 mV to 10V. A self-contained calibrator provides for self-calibration and may be used for calibrating other VLF voltmeters. The calibrator basically consists of a Kelvin-Varley divider fed by a reference voltage (either dc or sinewave generated by a ROM-DAC combination) A multijunction thermal converter (MJTC) was selected as the sensing device in the rms/dc converter of the DVM since its low ac/dc difference facilitates calibration of the ac calibrator. Factors affecting accuracy and response time are analyzed. The DVM response time is 40 s for the lowest input frequency. Its accuracy (percent of reading) is 0.1 percent above 0.5 Hz and 5 mV and 0.2 percent below these values. The ac calibrator accuracy is 0.02 percent. Measurement accuracy improves by a factor of about 4 for transfer measurements (comparing input voltages with ac calibrator voltages) Means for extending this accuracy to 0.01 percent are discussed.