TimeLab makes precision time and frequency measurements, including Allan deviation, MDEV, TDEV, phase noise, and phase/frequency drift.

The TimePod 5330A Operation and Service manual (6 MB .PDF) serves as a general-purpose guide to TimeLab.

See NIST's Handbook of Frequency Stability Analysis for information on various measurements made by TimeLab, as well as W. J. Riley's comprehensive tutorial, Techniques for Frequency Stability Analysis.

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Revision History

• Added Masks menu. To learn how to define masks for pass/fail testing, select Masks->Edit mask definitions and review the comments in the mask file
• Added support for multiple file selection in File->Load .TIM file
• Fixed bug that could cause an invalid initial phase sample to be recorded by Acquire->Acquire from live ASCII file
• Revised dialog and help text for Acquire->Symmetricom 5115A / 5120A / 5125A (Frequency stability) driver
• Acquire->Symmetricom TSC 5115A / 5120A / 5125A (Phase noise) option no longer crashes if invalid negative offsets are received from the instrument
• Error-bar calculations for ADEV and other statistical plots are now based on sqrt(N/M) for more conservative confidence estimates, where N is the number of phase samples in each bin and M is the bin's tau multiple
• Added Trace->Clip xDEV traces by confidence to suppress display of xDEV bins with large error bars
• Added Sample Interval field to Edit->Trace Properties dialog, allowing phase records to be resampled after acquisition to reduce their size
• If an xDEV trace refresh is in progress when Edit->Trace Properties is used to alter a phase/frequency/xDEV-related property, the refresh operation will be cancelled and restarted with the new value(s)
• Fixed bug that could cause spot-cursor values and mask test results for phase noise/AM noise measurements to vary slightly depending on the TimeLab window size
• Improved compatibility of HP 5371A/5372A driver with earlier HP 5371As
• Added optional timestamp support to ASCII phase and frequency export commands on the File menu
• Fixed bug in Edit->Trace Properties dialog that could cause data corruption during acquisition from a live ASCII file with a nonzero phase/frequency scale factor
• TimePod 5330A bug fixes and enhancements:
  • Added stream.exe, a Win32 console application that can be used to record a continuous stream of phase data to a file or transmit it via TCP/IP. See the appendix in the user guide for more information
  • Added Acquire->Acquire from TCP/IP streaming server option to support reception of phase data from stream.exe
  • Added Treat Warnings as Errors option to Advanced  tab of acquisition dialog to allow acquisitions to be aborted when frequency or amplitude drift occurs
  • Added Output Decimation field to acquisition dialog to reduce the amount of data generated by long acquisitions
  • Added Attenuate Instrument Spurs option to Noise and Jitter  tab to improve rejection of internal spurs during phase noise and AM noise measurement
  • Improved CPU performance of FFT threads used for phase noise and AM noise measurement by approximately 10%

• Enabling or disabling Trace->Suppress spurs in noise traces now automatically disables Trace->Smooth noise traces
• Various usability improvements for Trace->Show correlation gain and Trace->Show FFT segment filter slopes
• TimePod 5330A bug fixes and enhancements:
  • Significantly improved phase noise and AM noise measurement time. Traces now reach 1 Hz in less than 30 seconds, 0.1 Hz in 8 minutes, and 0.01 Hz in 30 minutes
  • The default segment table now supports phase noise and AM noise measurements down to 0.01 Hz. (If you've made any changes to the segment table, you may wish to back them up before installing this release.)
  • Added Overlapped Acquisition option to Noise and Jitter tab of acquisition dialog. Users with high-performance CPUs can enable this option for faster convergence in low-noise measurements.
  • Added AM Gain option to Noise and Jitter tab of acquisition dialog
  • The Measurement BW options in the Frequency Stability tab are now decade multiples of 0.5 Hz, with corresponding sample rates of 2, 20, 200, and 2000 points per second. (Previously, these values were constrained to integer fractions of the ADC clock rate.)
  • Added error message for cases where CPU performance is insufficient to allow FFT threads to keep up with incoming data
  • Added optional 'tag' field that can be used to identify a user-edited segment table with the Legend->Segment table option
  • Fixed bug that could cause "Access Denied" errors when attempting to save a modified segment table
  • Fixed bug that could cause timeout errors after failure of a previous acquisition

• Added Trace->Show xDEV error bars to display approximate one-sigma confidence intervals on Allan deviation and other statistical plots
• TimePod 5330A bug fixes and enhancements:
  • Input and reference amplitudes displayed in the legend table are now corrected for flatness and reported to 0.1 dB precision. Typical absolute accuracy is +/- 0.5 dB (not guaranteed.)
  • Added Cancel common-mode drift checkbox to Advanced  tab of acquisition dialog to prevent false drift warnings at 0.5 Hz and 5 Hz ENBW. (A warmup period of at least 30 minutes is still recommended when measuring at these bandwidths.)
  • Fixed bug that caused occasional timeout errors at the beginning of acquisition

• This release includes V1.00 of the TimePod 5330A Operation and Service manual (6 MB .PDF)
• Some options on the Trace and Display menus have been reordered for improved consistency with documentation
• Fixed bug that prevented correlation-gain table from appearing in some cases

• For consistency with noise trace levels, the estimated phase noise floor is now raised or lowered by any additional PN Gain value specified in the acquisition dialog or Edit->Trace Properties dialog
• Keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl + and Ctrl -) for Trace->Increase / Decrease averaging window now support the numeric keypad
• TimePod 5330A bug fixes and enhancements:
  • Fixed bug that could cause an overrange indication (flashing purple LED) when signals at certain levels near +16 dBm were applied
  • User-specified input frequencies in the acquisition dialog now require the reference frequency to be entered as well
  • To support custom applications, the TimePod 5330A's FPGA constraints file, USB API, and various related utilities are now included in drivers\TimePod 5330A beneath the TimeLab installation directory

• Added support for the Philips/Fluke PM6680 counter

• Added GPIB and LAN connection support for the Agilent 53220A / 53230A counters
• Fixed bug that could cause invalid text to appear in the Elapsed and Remaining legend table columns
• Instrument ID strings for SRS SR620 and Agilent 53200-series counters are now parsed and shortened for improved readability in the legend table
• TimePod 5330A bug fixes and enhancements:
  • New USB controller firmware (MD5330A_100.fx2) fixes potential connection problems with USB 3.0 chipsets, including bluescreen faults
  • New FPGA firmware (MD5330A_100.bit) fixes bug that could cause timeout errors at the beginning of acquisition
  • Firmware upgrade instructions added to preliminary user manual. Users of instruments prior to S/N 55985 should upgrade to the files above.
  • If the supplied reference frequency is a multiple of 1 kHz, it's no longer necessary to specify it in the acquisition dialog in order to obtain accurate frequency-count chart displays

• Added support for the Picotest/Array U6200A and compatible counters
• Added Legend->Pathname to display the full path to each loaded .TIM file. Legend->Filename now displays only the filename
• Added Legend->Remaining to display the time remaining for any active acquisitions
• Added Legend->Elapsed to display the elapsed time in the current stage of any active acquisitions
• For improved readability, frequency differences are now reported as fractions of the displayed Input Frequency in the legend table for each plot, rather than as fractions of the internal frequency estimate used to determine the phase slope
• Plot duration values are now updated with the actual acquisition duration at the end of each measurement
• Various minor cosmetic changes
• TimePod 5330A bug fixes and enhancements:
  • Fixed a bug in the acquisition dialog that disabled the Start Measurement button after selecting Restore Defaults

• Fixed some layout issues with Allan deviation and other numeric tables
• Fixed a bug that could cause invalid characters to appear in the last line of the frequency-count chart
• Keyboard shortcut for Help->Check for updates changed to Ctrl-u
• Font size adjustments are reported on status line
• Improved smoothing of phase noise and AM noise traces

• Added File->Export xDEV trace to save ADEV, MDEV, HDEV, and TDEV traces to a text file as tau, sigma(tau) pairs, one line per bin
• Added File->Save image to clipboard
• Added File->Reset all parameters, options, and settings at next startup
• Allan Deviation and other sigma(tau) charts now use 1-2-4 tau increments for improved readability
• Frequency count charts now use 1-3-10x averaging periods for improved readability
• Unzoomed phase/frequency traces are now rendered with an autoscaled Y axis which is centered at zero
• Improved display performance on slower PCs and laptops
• Font sizes are now scaled based on the desktop DPI setting
• Added Prologix GPIB-USB support option, which can be disabled in serial-compatible acquisition dialogs to allow access to FTDI serial ports
• Added Trace->Show correlation gain for selected noise trace
• Fixed bug that could cause spurious trace-corruption warnings in xDEV views
• Fixed bug that could generate invalid noise floor and spur data when using Trace->Show FFT segment filter slopes
• Installer now places example .tim files in common application data directory for access by all users, rather than local user data directory
• Various minor cosmetic changes

• Expanded auto-scaling capabilities in phase/frequency views, allowing tighter conformance to trace data
• Added Display->Edit colors

• Added File->Export AM/PM noise trace to save noise traces to a text file as offset, dBc/Hz pairs (one line per pixel column)
• Added File->Export AM/PM spur table to save spur tables to a text file as offset, dBc pairs (one line per entry)
• Added File->Export to Stable32 option to pass phase data to Stable32 for offline analysis
• Temporary files generated by the TSC 51xxA PN driver are now cleaned up when TimeLab exits
• TimePod 5330A bug fixes and enhancements:
  • Added support for hardware option codes

• Added driver for GPIB-addressable HP 53131A/53132A and compatible counters
• Added direct COM port support to Acquire->Acquire from counter in talk-only mode
• Added 'Timestamp' data type to talk-only driver to support timestamping counters such as the picPET
• Fixed bug in the HP 5370B driver that could cause crashes with National Instruments GPIB adapters
• The slope direction in the Phase Difference view now matches the sign of the frequency difference, for better compatibility with TSC 5120A and other timing analyzers. As a result, TIC users who need an accurate frequency-count chart will need to use the START channel for the DUT and the STOP channel for the reference.

• TimeLab should now run properly from a standard user account, even if a different administrator account was used to install the program

• Added driver for Stanford Research Systems SR620 counter. Both GPIB and direct RS-232 connections are supported by this driver.
• Text renderer now supports UTF-8 characters
• TimePod 5330A bug fixes and enhancements:
  • CyUSB drivers updated from 3.4.4 to 3.4.7

• Added About->Enable debug mode command to allow access to certain test features
• TimePod 5330A bug fixes and enhancements:
  • Added support for onboard attenuators, allowing input and reference levels to +20 dBm
  • Check for excessive error in user-specified input or reference frequencies

• TimePod 5330A bug fixes and enhancements:
  • Driver now supports both FPGA and USB firmware updates via the Utility tab in the acquisition dialog

• Added driver for HP 5335A counter

• TimePod 5330A bug fixes and enhancements:
  • Added support for evaluation licenses

• TimePod 5330A bug fixes and enhancements:
  • Driver installation supported for both 32-bit and 64-bit platforms

• Native 64-bit executable and .TLL drivers are automatically installed on all Windows x64 systems
• Added Help->Check for updates menu option. TimeLab can be configured to check for new releases on a weekly or monthly basis, every time the program is launched, or only when manually requested. By default, TimeLab will check for updates once per week.