I am building a 10-channel audio DAC using 10 ES9018 converters and an ultra low phase noise clock (Pulsar) with femtosecond jitter. What would be the best way to distribute the clock's signal to the 10 converters? It is assumed that the clock's board will be mounted directly on the PCB where the 10 converters are soldered. The clock's frequency is 100 MHz.
Clock distribution for low-jitter audio DAC
clockdacjitter
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Your limiting factor is probably voltage swing.
If your driving higher end headphones your probably looking at a 250->300 ohm load, 300ohm for higher end sennheiser cans for instance. But some phones (mostly professional models) can go as high as 600 ohms.
At 300ohms:
For 100mW you need 5.47 Vrms = 15.48 V peak-to-peak ( 18mA RMS)
For 200mW you need 7.75 Vrms = 22 V peak-to-peak ( 25mA RMS )
You probably won't find an integrated part that is specifically designed for portable devices that can achieve those levels of voltage swing. Your best bet is probably an audio op-amp with a high drive current (TI makes several, as does analog devices) or a purpose built headphone driver, for instance the TPA6120A2 would fit your needs.
Your challenge is then to build an efficient power supply to generate the +-12-15V rails needed.
Not sure what your plan it for batteries but one way to make it easier and more efficient is to use two batteries, maybe two 9V batteries, center tap for ground giving you +-9V rails to start with. You end up with bigger/more batteries but you don't lose any power boost converting up to your + rail and then using a charge pump or similar to get your negative rail.
EDIT: I'd target 100mW MAX...200mW would explode your head with most phones. expect 97-102db sensitivity at 1mW for most higher end cans (could be lower for pro models). meaning at 127mW you'd be looking at SPL in roughly the 115dB to 120db range which is more than enough to cause hearing loss if listening for extended periods. Targeting ~63mW would put you at 112db -> 117dB which eases your voltage swing constraints and can still cause plenty of ear damage.
First thing you need to recognize is that designing with a 16-bit ADC is not trivial. Even at 1 sample/s, you need to pay extreme attention to every aspect of the design to achieve 16-bit precision, or even more difficultly, 16-bit accuracy. At 130 MSa/s, everything is even more difficult.
The parts you need to do this kind of design simply won't be inexpensive. First, because of the extreme precision and careful testing needed to achieve the required performance. Second, because this kind of thing isn't done in mass-market products, so the parts aren't built in the kind of extremely high volumes that can bring the price down for everyone.
As Dave says in another answer, be sure you really need 16 bits before you go down this road. But maybe you really need 12-bit precision, and you know that if you use even a 14-bit ADC you're going to have a hard time achieving that, so you're designing with 16-bit ADC and optimize everything else as much as you can.
Another key is likely to be understanding exactly what specs you need to make your system work, and don't over-specify your clock jitter. In an SDR application, you're going to be doing math on the samples to extract specific frequency bands, etc, which will have an averaging effect over many cycles. So you might not care too much that absolutely every sample is timed perfectly, only that over your calculation interval, there isn't too much deviation from ideal timing. How much is too much, of course, depends on what kind of math you're doing and how small a signal you need to extract from how much noise.
CTS Valpey, for example, has XO's with rms jitter specs as low as 200 fs. But this spec is defined when the phase noise is integrated over a specific frequency band, 12 kHz to 20 MHz (relative to the carrier). If the total cycle-to-cycle jitter is considered, the spec jumps to 3-6 ps, depending on the center frequency.
Let me also address one comment you made in your question:
OCXO are extremely stable over time ( years ) and are usually used for that.
The "ovenized" part of that product mainly reduces the drift due to temperature change in the surrounding environment, which can be significant over time scales of minutes or seconds, not just years. It will also reduce wear on the part due to thermal cycling and improve the stability on a time scale of years.
For the < 100 fs jitter range you're looking for, you might actually need an OCXO to prevent small temperature changes affecting the performance during the time it takes to measure the jitter accurately enough to know you've achieved your spec.
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Best Answer
For jitter the big thing you want to avoid is noise coupling into the clock lines. Your clock device is single-ended, so that's a strike against you, but you can still consider routing it with shielding. That is, route ground traces next to the clock as much as possible, but avoid vias on the clock line (keeping it all on one layer should be paramount). For skew (also may be important for you), keep the electrical length of the clock lines equal to each converter.
Also, follow these suggestions closely: A Short Course in PCB Layout for High-Speed ADCs