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In short I'm recreating a program that reads 3 sinusoidal signals through an ADC performs some manipulations and then reproduces these signals through a DAC. In order to reproduce these signals I need the instantaneous phase of one of these manipulations. So I recreated a charge pump zero crossing pll in software.

I don't understand why you would go to the trouble of working out the analogue loop filter transfer function, convert it to the z domain, when in software when I could just implement a program that reads the amount of samples between zeros, and the instantaneous phase is just.

(current sample#-last zero sample#)/(pi*(number of samples between zeroes))

Now I've obviously missed something, but I don't know what to google to find out what.

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    $\begingroup$ Noise can introduce some jitter or ambiguity in the location of the zero crossings. A more robust alternative is the phase of the fundamental of the Fourier series, obtained by convolving with a sinusoid/cosinusoid, provided the frequency is well known. $\endgroup$
    – user7657
    Commented Sep 9, 2014 at 10:34
  • $\begingroup$ @YvesDaoust do you mean the frequency of the sinusoid i convolve it with is well known, because i dont know the frequency of the signal that i need the instantaneous phase of? I read a bit about using recursive discrete fourier transforms to achieve the same ends though i read allot of criticism that fourier transforms introduce large computational burdens. $\endgroup$
    – Darren Lanigan
    Commented Sep 9, 2014 at 11:00
  • $\begingroup$ If you know the frequency, there won't be a big burden, just two dot products. FFT is a much different matter. $\endgroup$
    – user7657
    Commented Sep 9, 2014 at 11:08

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For very high SNR signals locating the zero crossings will work pretty well. You use PLL's when the signal doesn't have a high SNR, like the following.

Noisy sinusoid

As you can see by inspection, a zero-crossing algorithm wouldn't have a prayer of working on this signal. A PLL, on the other hand, could do just fine. That is, by the way, a tone with an SNR of 8 dB.

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  • $\begingroup$ Just to clarify are you saying an analogue pll would work fine or are you saying that a zero crossing pll with a digital filter would work fine too(I know you can also use fft like you mentioned in a previous answer) ? $\endgroup$
    – Darren Lanigan
    Commented Sep 10, 2014 at 23:09
  • $\begingroup$ Oh and thank you for explaining why that algorithm wouldn't work, i knew it seemed to simple to be true. $\endgroup$
    – Darren Lanigan
    Commented Sep 11, 2014 at 1:18
  • $\begingroup$ I'm saying an analog or digital PLL would work, but I don't believe that a zero-crossing PLL with a digital filter would work. $\endgroup$
    – Jim Clay
    Commented Sep 11, 2014 at 4:26

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