The Long-Term Timing Performance of Satellite Time and Location Receivers Utilizing Signals from Low Earth Orbit Satellites.

Satelles and NIST presented a jointly written paper at the 2024 Institute of Navigation (ION) Precise Time and Time Interval Systems and Applications (PTTI) meeting.

The paper, entitled “The Long-Term Timing Performance of Satellite Time and Location Receivers Utilizing Signals from Low Earth Orbit Satellites,” was co-developed by time experts at Satelles and NIST and included data showing that an STL receiver with an oven-controlled crystal (OCXO) or a rubidium (Rb) oscillator provides a stable timing solution and maintains an average offset less than one nanosecond (ns) to UTC(NIST) after calibration.

The paper also described how STL timing receivers with a high-quality oscillator can maintain a Maximum Time Interval Error (MTIE) less than 100 ns for long durations, meeting the ITU-T G.8272 PRTC-A requirement for a primary reference clock.

 

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Research Highlights

We have presented measurements verifying that typical STL timing receivers can provide a stable and accurate timing solution with an average offset within a few nanoseconds of UTC(NIST).

Furthermore, STL timing receivers with a high-quality oscillator can maintain a Maximum Time Interval Error (MTIE) less than 100 ns for long durations, meeting the ITU-T G.8272 PRTC-A requirement for a primary reference clock.

Due to the STL receivers’ close-to-zero average time offset, the maximum time offset from UTC(NIST) at any point for any measurement duration is about one half the MTIE value or less than 50 ns for 100 days.

The stability of the STL receivers enables them to provide accurate long-term timing as seen by the correlation between performance results at NIST and the Folsom lab.

STL timing receivers using miniature rubidium oscillators can provide accurate timing with performance close to a benchtop rubidium receiver in a small and portable form factor.

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Satelles has a long and consequential history with the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology and collaborates extensively with NIST through an active Cooperative Agreement. For more detail on NIST’s technical evaluations of STL, visit our NIST webpage.