EEVblog Electronics Community Forum
Products => Test Equipment => Topic started by: Gandalf_Sr on October 24, 2017, 07:06:59 pm
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I'm working on my test bench setup and want to distribute my Nortel Networks NTBW50AA GPSDO 10 MHz output to my older HP/Agilent/Keysight test gear. To that end, I'm thinking of making a 10 MHz distribution Amp that I might fit insode the NTBW50AA.
The 10 MHz output from the NTBW50AA is a sine wave of 2 volts pp when driving into 50 Ohms and my RF meter measures it at 9.4 dBm. Most of the distribution Amp circuits I've found use 7400 logic to buffer and distribute like this one which uses 74AC04s (https://www.jackenhack.com/reference-10-mhz-distribution-amplifier/) but surely the square wave output will cause harmonics which is undesirable. I checked the 10 MHz output of the NTBW50AA and the 20 MHz harmonic is -37dBm which I think is high so here are a few questions:
1. Am I worrying unnecessarily, are the 10 MHz inouts on my high end test gear pretty resilient to harmonics etc?
2. Should I try to bandwidth limit the input before I distribute it to the test gear?
3. Should I add LC filters on the outputs such as these ones here (http://jwmeng.com/AppNote/AppNote003.html)?
4. Do I need to AC couple my signals with capacitors?
I'm thinking I'll design a PCB with SMA output connectors for my distribution, I can share here if others are interested.
Any suggestions are welcome.