Cross-Spectrum PM Noise Measurement, Thermal Energy, and Metamaterial Filters.

International audience; Virtually all commercial instruments for the measurement of the oscillator PM noise make use of the crossspectrum method (arXiv:1004.5539 [physics.ins-det], 2010). High sensitivity is achieved by correlation and averaging on two equal channels, which measure the same input, and reject the background of the instrument.We show that a systematic error is always present if the thermal energy of the input power splitter is not accounted for. Such error can result in noise underestimation up to a few decibels in the lowest-noise quartz oscillators, and in an invalid measurement in the case of cryogenic oscillators. As another alarming fact, the presence of metamaterial com…