Jackson Labs Technologies Inc., a designer and manufacturer of cutting-edge test & measurement equipment, announced the availability of its breakthrough product FireFly-II. FireFly-II is an extremely small COTS Global Positioning System Disciplined Oscillator (GPSDO) that has been ruggedized to meet military requirements, in particular the DOD new and emerging timing requirements. FireFly-II exceeds holdover requirements, delivers performance similar to Atomic Frequency Standards, and supports manpack, vehicle, airborne, as well as stationary applications.


At only 1.5 x 3.0 inches small, FireFly provides Stratum-1 long-term performance of better than 5 parts per Trillion (5E-012) averaged over 24 hours at less than half the size of the smallest competitive products. FireFly-II includes a special extended temperature range, low-g sensitivity ruggedized OCXO and is designed to meet stringent holdover requirements in adverse environmental conditions.

The unit provides an OCXO-sourced 1PPS LVDS output that is phase-synchronized to better than 50 ns rms to UTC, and a high-accuracy LVDS and CMOS 10 MHz Output. FireFly-II has a standard ambient temperature range of –20° to +75°C with options of –40° to +85°C. FireFly-II is easy to integrate in any application requiring a highly stable and accurate reference clock. The unit can be monitored and controlled by an RS-232 port via standard SCPI Commands. FireFly-II has a phase noise floor below –155 dBc/Hz, superior spurious suppression and very low jitter (<400 fs rms) at a power consumption of <3.5 W typically. A standard OCXO option is available for cost-sensitive industrial applications.

Jackson Labs Technologies Inc. president Said Jackson noted that the FireFly-II is an especially good fit for the new DOD timing requirements: “FireFly-II’s high holdover performance and low-g sensitivity combined with an extended mil-spec temperature range and use of ruggedized components allow it to exceed the DOD requirements. Its high performance at low COTS price-points creates an exceptional value proposition for a wide range of applications.”