Oscillator-Stability Analyzer Based on a Time-Tag Counter

A proposed system for simultaneous characterization of the instability of several precise, low-noise oscillators of nominally equal frequency would be built around a commercially available time-tag counter. One of the oscillators would be deemed to be a reference oscillator, and each of the other oscillators would be compared with it by operation of a combination of hardware and software. In addition, without further modification of the hardware, any two nonreference oscillators could be compared with each other via software.