Carsten Rieck

Time Transfer by Passive Listening Over a 10-Gb/s Optical Fiber

A technique for time and frequency transfer over an asynchronous fiber optical transmission control protocol (TCP)/IP network is being developed in Sweden by SP Measurement Technology together with STUPI. The technique is based on passive listening to existing data traffic at 10 Gb/s in the network. Since the network is asynchronous, intermediate supporting clocks will be located and compared at each router. We detect, with a specially designed high-speed optoelectronic device, a header recognizer, the frame alignment bytes of the synchronous optical network (SONET)/synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH) protocol, as a reference for the supporting clock comparison. The goal of the project is to establish a time transfer system with an accuracy on the nanosecond level. In this paper, we present the results of a time transfer over a distance of 5 km. We have compared two clocks: a cesium clock at the Swedish National Laboratory for time and frequency and a remote rubidium clock. The results of the time transfer with the fiber link have been simultaneously compared to measurements with a Global Positioning System (GPS) carrier phase link in terms of precision and stability. The root-mean-square (rms) difference between the time difference measured with the fiber link and the GPS link is approximately 300 ps. A large part of the difference is due to the heating of the GPS antenna cable, which introduces daily delay variations on the order of 1 ns from peak to peak. For one of the days with small day-to-day variations in temperature, the corresponding rms difference is 72 ps, and the Allan deviation is below 30 ps for averaging times longer than 5 min.

Measurements and Error Sources in Time Transfer Using Asynchronous Fiber Network

We have performed time transfer experiments based on passive listening in fiber optical networks using Packet over synchronous optical networking (SONET)/synchronous digital hierarchy (SDH). The experiments have been performed with different complexity and over different distances. For assessment of the results, we have used a GPS link based on carrier-phase observations. On a 560-km link, precision that is relative to the GPS link of <; 1 ns has been obtained over several months. In this paper, we describe and quantify the different error sources influencing the fiber time transfer measurements. We show that the temperature dependence of the optical fiber is the major contribution to the error budget, and, thus, reducing this effect should be the best way of improving the results.

Time and frequency transfer in an asynchronous TCP/IP over SDH-network utilizing passive listening

A technique for time and frequency transfer over an asynchronous TCP/IP network is being developed by SP, Swedish National Testing and Research Institute together with STUPI. When implemented, users will be able to compare their clocks by connecting to the system. The technique is based on passive listening to existing data traffic in the network. Since the network is asynchronous, intermediate clocks are located and compared at each router. We use the frame alignment bytes of the SONET/SDH protocol as references in order to compare these clocks. As a test bed for the experiment, we will use the Swedish University Computer Network (SUNET). A preliminary assessment of the technique in a lab environment will be performed late 2005

Thermal influence on the receiver chain of GPS carrier phase equipment for time and frequency transfer

In this study a temperature controlled environment is used in order to quantify the thermal influence on all major parts of state of the art geodetic GPS receiving equipment. Temperature variations, effective as time delay variations, were identified as a dominating error source that degrades the capabilities of carrier phase GPS based time and frequency transfer considerably. For purely code-based measurements with uncertainties in the ns range is temperature rarely an issue. In contrast carrier phase observations offer potentially a two orders of magnitude better accuracy and are therefore suitable for exploiting the characteristics of maser quality clocks. However, the stability of the environment around the receiver equipment defines the achievable accuracy. Four distinct parts of the receiver chain were subject to systematic measurements of the temperature-delay dependency: antenna preamplifier, antenna and clock cables, power distribution devices and geodetic receivers. A temperature controllable climate chamber was deployed with the respective component to follow a long time-constant temperature stepping. Signal through devices were mainly tested in a vector-voltmeter approach. Zero base line GPS processing was used to test receivers. With individual component temperature dependence being far above the expected accuracy of carrier phase based time and frequency transfer it underlines the necessity to include temperature as an important parameter into time/frequency solutions.

A fiber based frequency distribution system with enchanced output phase stability

Experimental results on the stability of the output phase of a frequency distribution system from several days of measurement is presented, in addition to a discussion regarding the influence of control loop parameters. The setup handles the issue that the output phase stability of a system depends on perturbations along the transmission length. This is especially critical if the signal is transmitted through optical fiber, at lengths of a few 100 m. An experimental evaluation using a laser based transmitter at a wavelength of 850 nm, and 625 m of multimode fiber where 575 m where placed outdoor, a temperature dependence of 100 ps/°C was detected. To compensate for these slow variations in real time, a setup using two-way transmission, in conjunction with an adjustable optical delay, was constructed. This device is adjusted to induce a delay variation of equal magnitude but opposite direction, in comparison to the delay change of the fiber. Calculating the modified Allan deviation of the transmitted signal, it is apparent that without active compensation, the deviation at τ below 1000 s is comparable to the values from the measurement system without transmission. At longer integration times, however, the slow variations in the fiber transmission will deteriorate the modified ADEV substantially. When activating the dynamic adjustment of pre-delay in the system, the deviation at shorter times will increase with a few dB, however, the modified ADEV decreases continuously with τ, eventually below the values for the uncompensated system. In conclusion, activating a dynamically controlled pre-delay in a fiber based frequency transmission system will induce a small penalty on fast variations of the output phase, however giving a remarkable improvement on slower variations. The usefulness of this added functionality must therefore be determined by the application of the signal.

VLBI frequency transfer using CONT11

Geodetic VLBI is an independent technique, which does not rely on third parties. This makes it a viable future alternative for time- and frequency transfer over long baselines. Frequency link instabilities in the order of 1.5e-15 for time periods of one day are comparable to those achievable with methods using GNSS carrier-phase observations. Data of the continuous VLBI campaign CONT11 were analyzed and compared to results from GPS PPP analysis on collocated/common clock stations.

First results of real-time time and frequency transfer using GPS code and carrier phase observations

We have used code and carrier phase data from the global positioning system (GPS) satellites to estimate time differences between atomic clocks in near (<10 s) real-time. For some sites we have used data transmitted via Internet connections and TCP/IP, while for other sites data were collected in deferred time, but processed by a Kalman filter-based software as if they were available in real time. Satellite orbit and clock data of different quality have been used. The real-time estimates of time differences of the station clocks have been compared to those estimated from regular postprocessing using accurate satellite orbits and clocks from the international GPS service (IGS). First results show that the standard deviation of the differences between the real-time carrier phase-based and the postprocessing estimates of the clock time differences can be less than 100 ps for baselines of about 1000 km.

Combining GPS and VLBI for inter-continental frequency transfer

For decades the global positioning system (GPS) has been the only space geodetic technique routinely used for inter-continental frequency transfer applications. In the past very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) has also been considered for this purpose and the methods capabilities were studied several times. However, compared to GPS current VLBI technology only provides few observations per hour, thus limiting its potential to improve frequency comparisons. We therefore investigate the effect of combining GPS and VLBI on the observation level in order to draw the maximum benefit from the strength of each individual technique. As a test-bed for our study we use the CONT11 campaign observed in 2011. First we review the frequency transfer performance that can be achieved with independent technique-specific analyses, both with individual software packages and with the multi-technique software c5++. With this analysis approach both techniques, GPS and VLBI, show similar frequency link instabilities at the level of 10−14 to 10−15 (MDEV) on inter-continental baselines for averaging times of one day. Then we use the c5++ software for a combined analysis of GPS and VLBI data on the observation level. We demonstrate that our combination approach leads to small but consistent improvements for frequency transfer of up to 10%, in particular for averaging periods longer than 3000 s.

Time transfer using an asynchronous computer network: Results from three weeks of measurements

We have performed a time transfer experiment between two atomic clocks, over a distance of approximately 75 km using an 10 Gbit/s asynchronous fiber-optic computer network. The time transfer was accomplished through passive listening on existing data traffic and a pilot sequence in the SDH bit stream. In order to assess the fiber-link clock comparison, we simultaneously compared the clocks using a GPS carrier phase link. The standard deviation of the difference between the two time transfer links over the three-week time period was 243 ps.

Use of two traveling GPS receivers for a relative calibration campaign among European laboratories

We report about a GPS receiver relative calibration campaign, which took place between five European National Metrology Institutes or Designated Institutes: LNE-SYRTE in Observatoire de Paris (Paris, France), where the reference receiver of the campaign was located, ROA (San Fernando, Spain), SP (Borås, Sweden), PTB (Braunschweig, Germany) and INRIM (Torino, Italy). We used as traveling equipment two main units, both connected to a single antenna, and we kept track of the offset between both traveling units in all the visited sites. An external validation of the resulting hardware delays is provided against the time scale differences derived from the UTC - UTC(k) data published by BIPM in its monthly Circular T. Thanks to a very good stability of the traveling equipment, we obtained expanded uncertainty estimates within 2.0 ns (k = 2) for the hardware delays.