Today Satelles issued a press release announcing a performance study conducted by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the government agency responsible for maintaining the Coordinated Universal Time scale known as UTC(NIST), the national standard for time and frequency in the United States.
The study found that Satellite Time and Location (STL) from Satelles is a reliable source of timing that is highly consistent with Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and is based on a signal that is independent from the Global Positioning System (GPS) and other Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). This evaluation by NIST confirms that users of PNT-reliant applications can obtain accurate and reliable timing without using GNSS.
Read the full press release on the Satelles website and PR Newswire as well as informative stories that appeared in GPS World and Inside GNSS.
NOVEMBER 2021 UPDATE: NIST published Technical Note 2187 entitled “A Resilient Architecture for the Realization and Distribution of Coordinated Universal Time to Critical Infrastructure Systems in the United States.” This report was finalized in August 2020 but not published until November 2021. Section IV.A of the report begins on p. 158 under the heading “Indirect Distribution of UTC(NIST) via the Satellite Time and Location (STL) Service” and not only provides the full details behind the claims made by Satelles in its April 2021 press release but also showcases STL as an available service to indirectly distribute UTC(NIST).
