Satellite to ground timing experiments
Abstract
Synchronization of ground based clocks to submicrosecond accuracies is of growing interest in the scientific, commercial, and military activities. This paper describes experiments performed using a recent orbiting experimental TRANSIT satellite to identify the capabilities for passive recovery of satellite time signals to synchronize independent ground based clocks and measure their relative rates. An accounting has been made of signal delays and uncertainties due to propagation paths, ionospheric effects, tropospheric effect, circuit delays, and random noise effects such that clock synchronization errors were less than 75 nanoseconds when the two clocks being synchronized received timing signals from the satellite within 100 minutes of each other.
- Publication:
-
28th Annual Frequency Control Symposium
- Pub Date:
- 1974
- Bibcode:
- 1974frco.symp..384T
- Keywords:
-
- Bit Synchronization;
- Clocks;
- Ground Stations;
- Satellite Transmission;
- Time Signals;
- Transit Satellites;
- Instrument Errors;
- Ionospheric Propagation;
- Random Noise;
- Signal Transmission;
- Time Lag;
- Tropospheric Scattering;
- Instrumentation and Photography