United States Patent 1191 [Ill Patent Number: 4,550,292 Smith [45] Date of Patent: Oct
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United States Patent 1191 [ill Patent Number: 4,550,292 Smith [45] Date of Patent: Oct. 29, 1985 [54] AUTOMATIC OSCILLATOR FREQUENCY frequency (fREF) of known accuracy and then sequen- CONTROL SYSTEM tially checks and corrects the frequencies of several [75] Inventor: Stephen F. Smith, Knoxville, Tenn. voltage (13a. .. 13e) controlled local oscillator circuits (12a. .. 12e). The timing circuit initiates the machine [73] Assignee: The United States of America as cycles of a central processing unit (30) which, over a represented by the Administrator of sampling interval having a duration of a fixed number of the National Aeronautics and Space machine cycles, applies a frequency index (FI) to an Administration, Washington, D.C. input register (22) in a modulo-sum frequency divider [21] Appl. NO.: 529,803 stage (20) and enables a multiplexer (16) to clock an accumulator register (26) in the divider stage (20) with [22] Filed: Sep. 6, 1983 a cyclical signal derived from the oscillator circuit [51] Int. cI.4 ............................................... H03L 7/08 being checked. Upon expiration of the interval, the [52] U.S. Cl.' ........................................ 331/2; 331/1 A processing unit (30) compares the remainder (FN) held [58] Field of Search ....................... 331/1 A, 2, 14, 16; as the contents of the accumulator (26) against a stored 375/120;455/260 zero-error constant and applies an appropriate correc- [561 References Cited tion word (CW) to a correction stage (604 62a, ... 64u, , . 60e, 62e, to shift the frequency of the oscillator U.S. PATENT DOCUMENTS . 64e) being checked. A signal taken from the accumulator 3,913,028 10/1975 Bosselaers .......................... 331/1 A register (26) may be used to drive a phase plane ROM 4,086,544 4/1978 Fried .................................. 331/1A (94) and, with periodic shifts in the applied frequency 4,121,162 10/1978 Alberkrack et al. 325/421 ................ index (FI), to provide frequency shift keying of the 4,190,807 2/1980 Weber ................................ 331/1 A 4,305,045 12/1981 Metz et al. .......................... 331/1 A applied resultant output signal. Interposition of the 4,462,110 7/1984 Baldwin et al. ................ 375/120 X phase adder (90) between the accumulator register (26) and phase plane ROM (94) additionally permits phase FOREIGN PATENT DOCUMENTS shift keying of the output signal by periodic variation in 2073981 10/1981 United Kingdom ............... 331/1 A the value of a phase index (PI) applied to one input port Primary Examiner-Eugene R. LaRoche of the phase adder (90). An overflow signal may be Assistant Examiner-Robert J. Pascal taken from an adder (24) in the frequency divider stage Attorney, Agent, or Firm-John 0. Tresansky; John R. (20) to drive an auxiliary counter (120) to provide a Manning; Ronald F. Sandler prescaling number which can be used by the central processing unit (30) to expand the correction range of [571 ABSTRAa the control system. A frequency control system is provided which makes an initial correction of the frequency (fcLK) of its own timing circuit (50,52,54,56) after comparison against a 16 Claims, 6 Drawing Figures U.S. Patent oct. 29,1985 Sheet 1 of6 4,550,292 -------I I I $1 \I 1 c\I M J - --- Ir I a *u) ty U.S. Patent OC~.29,1985 Sheet 2 of 6 4,550,292 FIG 2. PERFORM ITERATION FOR LAST LOCAL 1OSCl LLATOR &+- CORRECTION INPUT FN FROM SUCCESSFUL ? 1 DOUBLE -PRECISION . SUBTRACT CORRECTION ZERO - ERROR' CONSTANTI h DIFFERENCE EQUAL ZERO t I ? CORRECTION WORD TO 1 DAC62F I PERFORM ITE RAT ION FORIST LOCAL YES OSCILLATOR FREQU YES NO > PRESET LIMIT ? INHIBIT SYSTEM U.S. Patent OCL29,1985 Sheet 3 of 6 4,550,292 SAMPLING INT ERVA L FI BUSS 32 PORT 46 i TRIGGER 27 nm-.. Mf i TRIGGER 29 n FIG 3 GATE 28 n ADDER 24 ACCUMULATOR 26 U.S. Patent OC~.29,1985 Sheet 4 of 6 4,550,292 1 Y r------ I I - 0 cu, I I Irb U.S. Patent Oct. 29,1985 Sheet 5 of 6 4,550,292 I -1 I I I SI I I 81 ‘4 I I I I I IN I I tt I fi -1 cncnl w nEl nI 4.550.292 1 2 loops to control the frequencies of a plurality of digital- AUTOMATIC OSCILLATOR FREQUENCY ly-variable slave oscillators. The microprocessors com- CONTROL SYSTEM pare control words as generated with the same words after those words have been cycled through the phase- ORIGIN OF THE INVENTION 5 locked loops. Then, error signals proportional to differ- The invention described herein was made in the per- ences between the generated and cycled words are formance of work under a NASA contract and is sub- applied to the slave oscillators to shift their resonant ject to the provisions of Section 305 of the National frequencies. Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, Public Law 85-568 The precision to which these prior art approaches are (72 Stat. 435; 42 U.S.C. 2457). 10 able to maintain the frequency of an electronic oscilla- tor is inherently limited by both the duration of their TECHNICAL FIELD sampling intervals and the bit capacity of their counter This invention relates to frequency control systems registers. Substantially longer sampling intervals are and, more particularly, to a system for automatically infeasible because longer intervals would limit the avail- controlling the frequency of an electronic oscillator. l5 ability of the oscillators for their intended purposes while larger registers are expensive and necessarily BACKGROUND ART require microprocessors with larger data handling ca- Electronic oscillators have long served as local fre- pacities. Moreover, a satisfactory degree of long-term quency sources for such diverse applications as generat- oscillator stability can be achieved in a phase locked ing fixed carrier frequencies in radio transmitters and 2o loop approach only by integrating several samplings controlling synchronism in digital data processors. taken over a large number of oscillator cycles, a proce- With the advent of high frequency, multiple channel dure which is undesirable because it not only limits the data networks, it has become critically important for useful availability of an oscillator for other uses but also error free operation to maintain each local oscillator in consumes greater quantities of microprocessor time per continuous operation at a single, invariant frequency. In 25 oscillator and thereby limits the number of oscillators a network providing for transmission of data over nar- which can be controlled by a single frequency control row bandwidth, radio frequency channels, for example, system. a minor drift in one oscillator frequency of merely a few cycles will cause interference in neighboring channels STATEMENT OF INVENTION resulting in the loss of nearly all data transmitted over 30 Accordingly, it is one object of this invention to pro- the affected channels. Moreover, if the oscillator also serves as a local clock in a data transmission network, vide an improved system for controlling the frequency the same frequency drift will cause a delay in transmis- of an electronic oscillator. sion which will interfere with transmissions by other It is another object to provide a system for automati- networks allocated different time slots on the same 35 cally stabilizing the frequency of an oscillator with channel. The effects of frequency drift are compounded minimal consumption of power. if the network depends upon some form of angle modu- It is still another object to provide a system for auto- lation for processing transmitted digital data. matically counteracting long-term drift in the frequency Early efforts to avoid the occurrence of frequency of an oscillator. drift tended to concentrate on the quality of the oscilla- 4o It is a still further object to provide a system for tor and the stability of its environment with techniques simultaneously controlling the frequencies of several such as using a crystal for controlling the oscillator’s oscillators. frequency and maintaining the crystal inside an oven at It is also an object to provide a programmable system a constant temperature. The use of high quality crystals for automatically controlling the frequencies of one or maintained in ovens, however, does not obviate such 45 more oscillators in a single network. causes of long term frequency drift as crystal aging. It is another object to provide a system for digitally Moreover, high quality crystals mounted inside ovens modulating the frequency and phase of a cyclical signal. are not only too expensive for most applications, partic- These and other objects are achieved with a system ularly multi-channel networks where each channel usu- for automatically controlling the frequencies of one or ally has a discrete oscillator, but necessitates a large 50 more electrically controllable oscillators through se- source of constant power to maintain the oven tempera- quential correction iterations. A cyclical signal from tures. This latter requirement renders high quality, ov- one of the local oscillators is passed by a multiplexer en-mounted crystals unsuitable for use in remotely de- held in an enabled condition during a sampling interval ployed networks powered by small batteries. regulated by a timing stage and used to clock an accu- More recent efforts have concentrated upon develop- 55 mulator register of a modulo-sum frequency divider. ment of phase locked loops for detecting and correcting The contents of the accumulator are incremented dur- frequency drift of a variable-frequency local oscillator. ing each pulse of the cyclical signal by a frequency In one instance, this required the use of a digital counter index number supplied by a central processing unit. being enabled by a master clock during a sampling inter- After termination of the sampling interval, the contents val to count pulses of the variable local oscillator.