A fully-digital realtime SoC FPGA based phase noise analyzer with cross-correlation

We report on a fully-digital and realtime operation of a phase noise analyzer using modern digital techniques with cross-correlation. With the advent of system on chip field-programmable gate arrays (SoC FPGAs) embedding hard core central processing unit, coprocessor and FPGA onto a single integrated circuit, the building of sensitive analysis devices for Time & Frequency research is made accessible at virtually no cost and benefits from reconfigurability. Used with high-speed digitizers we have successfully implemented a four-channel system whose preliminary results at 10 MHz shows a residual white noise floor <; -185 dBrad
²
/Hz up to 5 MHz off the carrier, and flicker <; -127 dBrad
²
/Hz using cross-correlation.