  A wideband phase comparator for precise measurements of phase difference of
high current shunts has been developed at INRIM. The two-input digital phase
detector is realized with a precision wideband digitizer connected through a
pair of symmetric active guarded transformers to the outputs of the shunts
under comparison. Data are first acquired asynchronously, and then transferred
from on-board memory to host memory. Because of the large amount of data
collected the filtering process and the analysis algorithms are performed
outside the acquisition routine. Most of the systematic errors can be
compensated by a proper inversion procedure.
  The system is suitable for comparing shunts in a wide range of currents, from
several hundred of milliampere up to 100 A, and frequencies ranging between 500
Hz and 100 kHz. Expanded uncertainty (k=2) less than 0.05 mrad, for frequency
up to 100 kHz, is obtained in the measurement of the phase difference of a
group of 10 A shunts, provided by some European NMIs, using a digitizer with
sampling frequency up to 1 MHz. An enhanced version of the phase comparator
employs a new digital phase detector with higher sampling frequency and
vertical resolution. This permits to decrease the contribution to the
uncertainty budget of the phase detector of a factor two from 20 kHz to 100
kHz. Theories and experiments show that the phase difference between two high
precision wideband digitizers, coupled as phase detector, depends on multiple
factors derived from both analog and digital imprint of each sampling system.
