Tick Tock, Tick Tock

Q.  My clock is accurate to 1 ppm – what could possibly need improvement?

A quarter of a century ago I was technical advisor to a Parliamentary Committee on CB Radio. We met at Westminster Hall in the Houses of Parliament in London, almost directly under Big Ben, whose chimes punctuated our deliberations. I frequently used Big Ben as an example when explaining the importance of various features of clocks and oscillators.

In a sampled data system, a changing signal is sampled at regular intervals and the signal is processed by performing calculations on the samples. If an oscillator has jitter, the clock edges occur earlier or later than they would in a jitter-free clock. The frequency accuracy is unaffected, only the exact timing of individual transitions varies.

If an edge comes early, the signal being sampled will not yet have reached its correct value, and if it comes late, the signal will have moved on – so to achieve accuracy in a sampled system it is important to have adequately low jitter on the system clock. In fact, frequency accuracy is often far less important. Obviously, the faster the sampled signal is changing, the greater the error will be for a given amount of jitter. The clock frequency is irrelevant – it is the frequency of the analog signal being sampled (in the case of the ADC) or signal being synthesized (in the case of the DAC) that matters.

Although the problem can be significant at quite modest signal frequencies (I have memories of digital audio systems with performance devastated by inappropriate clock oscillators – one a 555 timer, another an interrupt-driven microprocessor) it becomes critical in modern digital radios using IF sampling at signal frequencies of tens or hundreds of MHz. To give numbers, a perfect ADC (no imperfections of any sort) working with a 100 MHz signal and a clock with one pico second (1E-12 seconds) rms jitter cannot achieve a resolution greater than 10 bits.

The relevant formula, low noise clock circuits, and circuit techniques that ensure a low jitter clock signal is not degraded before it reaches the circuits it drives, are discussed in the links on our website below. A simple illustration of the difference between clock accuracy and clock jitter is to consider what would happen if Big Ben's hands always pointed to the exact time, but the chime occurred randomly up to five minutes early or late.

James Bryant Offers Intrigue, Interest and Technological Troubleshooting Ideas... engineer, applications manager, philosopher, humorist, columnist and radio ham (G4CLF), only a man with such an eclectic dossier could make the often drab world of semiconductors come to life with such color and imagination.

For More Information:

Clock Home Page

The Effect of Clock Noise on Sampled Data Systems (ppt, 655,360 bytes)

MT008: Converting Oscillator Phase Noise to Time Jitter

Clock and Timing Overview

ADIsimCLK™ Design and Evaluation Software

Reference Designs

AN-769: Generating Multiple Clock Outputs from the AD9540

Useful Analog Devices Links:

Analog Dialogue

Webcasts from Analog Devices

Sign up for Analog Devices eNewsletters

Analog Devices Homepage

back to top