Product specifications

Intro
5
The aim of the project
Intro
Most of the data acquisition systems do not have their own stable clock to sample analog input signals but
provide input lines to connect external ultra-stable clock source. Usually an expensive signal generator is
used locked to ultra-stable 10MHz sine wave reference, but, the higher the frequency range the higher is
the cost, and, the higher the frequency the worst can be the phase noise when for budget reasons the
target must be a cheaper signal generator (sometimes refurbished).
A very interesting module has been realized few years ago by the Valon Technology LLC and passed many
careful tests also done by the community of CASPER (https://casper.berkeley.edu/wiki/Main_Page). It is a
Dual 137.5-4400MHz Frequency Synthesizer mini board (about only 50x50mm) having low phase noise an
low power consumption and integrating a microcontroller and flash memory to program the desired
frequency to individual output and the possibility to use an external reference or an onboard oscillator.
The 5007 synthesizer module is sell unboxed (therefore unshielded) and needs an additional serial adapter
(that can be a 9-Pin DSUB connector interface or a mini USB adapter, both 3VTTL).
Several data acquisition boards used here at the Medicina Radiotelescopes station may use this synthesizer
if placed in the same rack of the backend and properly shielded. Due to the flexibility and scalability of the
Medicina backends that allow to load different projects over the same hardware there is the need to use
different clock frequencies to drive the ADC boards, and, if the frequency change can be done remotely and
loaded automatically by the same scripts which configure the backend project would be very useful.
The target can be easily reached by using a Ethernet-Serial adapter which allows to use serial devices over a
Ethernet link.