[evlatests] phase noise on outer antennas {External}

[Paul Demorest]

There is a monitor point L304.OPT_PWR, I poked around a bit.  ea26 (W32) does seem like an outlier relative to the rest.  But someone who knows what these numbers mean should take a look.

Also in case there is any lingering uncertainty about atmosphere, source structure, reference antennas, etc, here is one more plot.  Phase vs time on 4 east-arm baselines (pads E40 through E72).  These all have the same baseline length (about 3km) so will see the same source structure and have similar atmospheric properties.  The only one that shows the extra "fast" noise (which again is identical on all IFs) is the one involving ea21/E72.

-Paul

________________________________________
From: evlatests <evlatests-bounces at listmgr.nrao.edu> on behalf of Todd Hunter via evlatests <evlatests at listmgr.nrao.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, October 29, 2024 8:56 AM
To: evlatests at listmgr.nrao.edu
Subject: Re: [evlatests] phase noise on outer antennas {External}

I wonder if there is an extra EDFA in the fibers to those outermost pads
whose amplification level is (no longer) being set correctly?    Is
there any monitor point on optical power?

Todd

On 10/29/24 10:48, Ken Sowinski via evlatests wrote:
> Since you first brought this up I have wondered whether the strict pad
> dependence implicated a problem with fiber.  Your summary here
> reinforces that as an explanation.  Perhaps a check of LO quality at
> W32 (it's easier to get to) is in order?
>
> Ken
>
>
> On Mon, 28 Oct 2024, Paul Demorest via evlatests wrote:
>
>> hi all,
>>
>> Now that we're in A-config, recent testing at high time resolution
>> (10ms) has shown excess short-timescale phase noise affecting the
>> outer three antennas (ea21 at E72, ea24 at W72 and ea18 at N72), as well as
>> ea26 at W32.  A few plots are attached so you can see what I mean.
>> These were done via 10ms-dump-time observations of a bright source at
>> K-band, and show two of the bad antennas (ea18, ea21) plus a good
>> antenna (ea13) for comparison.  I also took data at X and Ka bands, a
>> summary of these results is in the attached text file.  The worst
>> ones have short-term phase RMS of ~20 deg at Ka, which is >10x larger
>> than the good antennas.  This is enough to cause decorrelation
>> (sensitivity loss) at the ~5-10% level and may be at least partially
>> responsible for reduced high-freq performance seen on these antennas
>> in recent stress tests.
>>
>> This noise has the following properties which make me suspect
>> something like LO phase jitter is the cause:
>>  - It looks totally random vs time.
>>  - All 4 IFs for a given antenna show exactly the same noise (see
>> zoom-in plot for example).
>>  - The amplitude of the noise scales in proportion to observing
>> frequency, higher freqs are more affected.
>>
>> It's also notable that all 3 outer antennas looked fine in B-config,
>> and only started showing this noise once they moved to their A-config
>> locations.  I found some 10ms X-band data from last A-config (Aug
>> 2023) and it shows a similar pattern:  the outer pads and W32 are
>> noisier than the rest, even though some different antennas were
>> involved at the time.
>>
>> Since this seems to be pad-related rather than antenna-related, my
>> hand-wavy guess is maybe LO optical power is getting a bit too weak
>> over the very long fibers?  And as for W32 maybe it just has some
>> problem with its fiber connection causing a similar effect.  Even if
>> that's not the right explanation, I do think this is worth
>> understanding and (if possible) fixing.  Let me know if you have any
>> questions/suggestions.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Paul
>
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