A signal generator’s pedestal phase noise has different impacts on the system depending on the application. For example, when used as a local oscillator in a receiver application, pedestal phase noise degrades the receiver sensitivity. When used as a clock source in a data converter, pedestal phase noise (together with close-in phase noise) determines the jitter, which ultimately effects the converters dynamic performance.

We carried out a test to compare ERASynth to a couple of bench-top signal generators available in our lab. Here is the result

The photo of test setup