[Rana, Koji]

1. The response of the IMC WFS board was measured. The LO signal with 0.3Vpp@29.5MHz on 50Ohm was supplied from DS345. I've confirmed that this signal is enough to trigger the comparator chip right next to the LO input. The RF signal with 0.1Vpp on the 50Ohm input impedance was provided from another DS345 to CH1 with a frequency offset of 20Hz~10kHz. Two DS345s were synced by the 10MHz RFreference at the rear of the units. The resulting low frequency signal from the 1st AF stage (AD797) and the 2nd AF stage (OP284) were checked.

Attachment 1 shows the measured and modelled response of the demodulator with various frequency offsets. The value shows the signal transfer (i.e. the output amplitude normalized by the input amplitude) from the input to the outputs of the 1st and 2nd stages. According to the datasheet, the demodulator chip provides a single pole cutoff of 340kHz with the 33nF caps between AP/AN and VP. The first stage is a broadband amplifier, but there is a passive LPF (fc=~1kHz). The second stage also provides the 2nd order LPF at fc~1kHz too. The measurement and the model show good agreement.

2. The output noise levels of the 1st and 2nd stages were meausred and compared with the noise model by LISO.
Attachment 2 shows the input referred noise of the demodulator circuit. The output noise is basically limited by the noise of the first stage. The noise of the 2nd stage make the significant contribution only above the cut off freq of the circuit (~1kHz). And the model supports this fact. The 6.65kOhm of the passive filter and the input current noise of AD797 cause the large (>30nV/rtHz) noise contribution below 100Hz. This completely spoils the low noiseness (~1nV/rtHz) of AD797. At lower frequency like 0.1Hz other component comes up above the modelled noise level.

3. Rana and I had a discussion about the modification of the circuit. Attachment 4 shows the possible improvement of the demod circuit and the 1st stage preamplifier. The demodulator chip can have a cut off by the attached capacitor. We will replace the 33nF caps with 1uF and the cut off will be pushed down to ~10kHz. Then the passive LPF will be removed. We don't need "rodeo horse" AD797 for this circuit, but op27 is just fine instead. The gain of the 1st stage can be increased from 9 to 21. This should give us >x10 improvement of the noise contribution from the demodualtor (Attachment 3). We also can replace some of the important resistors with the thin film low noise resistors.