He would say that wouldn't he - trying to sell multiplier / locking systems ;-)
The phase noise on modern synthesizers really is good these days,
especially if you use high comparison frequencies and wide loop
bandwidth. I have one or two of those chips, all salvaged from old
PCBs found at rallies. In fact, I have a whole tin full of salvaged
synth chips; at least 8 different LMX types, all of which have
slightly different programming requirements, so it is easiest to just
settle on using one or two types
Back in the year dot - when high performance synths were still novel,
someone once suggested to me using a heater on the crystal to turn it
into a VCXO. Provided it was the right (or perhaps that should be
'wrong') cut of crystal it could give a more controllable shift than
a varicap might allow. I never tried it, but suspected the thermal
delay would make the loop bandwidth a bit too narrow. But it would
solve the need to keep the crystal thermally controlled in a
conventional VCXO design - as thermal effects were upsetting the loop
.
Andy G4JNT
On 6 December 2015 at 11:55, Wolfgang Büscher <[email protected]> wrote:
> Thanks Andy. These MC155170 are hard to find these days, but I have a couple
> of PMB2306 chips from scrapped wireless phones waiting for a new life. One
> of them has already made it into a 70 MHz synthesizer... and on a 'nice'
> combination of the divider and multiplier value, as you mentioned, the phase
> noise may be low enough to clock an SDR with it (even though exactly that's
> what G4HUP does *not* recommend in his article).
> Or maybe a 66.6666 MHz stock oscillator can be turned into a VCXO simply by
> varying its supply voltage (a tiny bit).. may be worth trying.
>
> Cheers,
> Wolf .
>
> Am 06.12.2015 um 11:46 schrieb Andy Talbot:
>>
>> I did it with a simple PLL
>> VCO running at 66.6...MHz divided by 30. 10MHz reference input divided
>> by 3,
>> Phase comparator running at 333.333...kHz
>>
>> I used a superannuated obsolete MC145170 chip, but there are a
>> plethora of modern PLL chips out now that will do it for you.
>> Several types even have internal VCOs so you can have a one chip
>> solution (plus the programmer, of course)
>>
>> Andy G4JNT
>>
>>
>> On 6 December 2015 at 10:33, Wolfgang Büscher <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>> Greetings all,
>>>
>>> After trying a couple of modifications to my SDR-IQ, I found the
>>> following
>>> site ..
>>>
>>> http://g4hup.com/SDRlock.html
>>>
>>> .. which describes how to lock the 66.6667 MHz 'ADC clock' in the SDR-IQ
>>> to
>>> an external 10 MHz reference.
>>>
>>> Does anyone here have own experiences with this, or a similar circuit ?
>>> Dividing the 10 MHz reference by three, and subtracting that from 10 MHz
>>> multiplied by 7 sounds intriguing, but a multi-pole crystal ladder filter
>>> to
>>> 'clean up' the resulting 66.6666666 MHz signal is easier said than done
>>> (..lacking such crystals in the junk box).
>>>
>>> 73,
>>> Wolf DL4YHF .
>>>
>>>
>
>
|