Phase noise measurements with the Koheron ALPHA250
July 08, 2018We released a new FPGA design for phase noise measurements.
Using a Koheron ALPHA250, we compared the phase noise of 40 MHz signals from 3 different noise sources: a Red Pitaya STEMLab 125-14, another Koheron ALPHA250, and a 120 MHz signal generator (Keysight 33622A):
The higher phase noise of the Red Pitaya can be explained by the fact that the Red Pitaya DAC is clocked from a phase-locked loop inside the FPGA, instead of an external PLL.
The source code is available on GitHub for the ALPHA250 and the Red Pitaya.
250 MSPS acquisition board
2190 €
Koheron ALPHA250 is a Xilinx Zynq development board with 100 MHz RF front end. It features two 14-bit ADC channels and two 16-bit DAC channels, both at 250 MSPS, clocked by an ultra-low jitter clock generator. It includes 4 channel 24-bit ADC and 4 channel 16-bit DAC. The board comes with open source reference designs.
