A Study on Using the SDR Receiver for the Europe-Europe and Transatlantic TWSTFT Links

Published

January 31, 2017

Author(s)

Victor S. Zhang, Thomas E. Parker, Joseph Achkar, Dirk Piester, Yi-Jiun Huang, Shinn-Yan Lin, Zhiheng Jiang

Abstract

The BIPM and the CCTF Working Group on TWSTFT have stimulated a pilot study on using software defined radio (SDR) receivers for TWSTFT in the framework of the realization of International Atomic Time (TAI). The SDR receivers based on a software developed by TL have been set up at PTB, OP and NIST during summer and fall in 2016. Continuous SDR TWSTFT measurements have been established for the OP/PTB, NIST/OP and NIST/PTB links. From the SDR TWSTFT time differences, we observed that the commonly present but undesired diurnal pattern in the OP/PTB SDR TWSTFT difference is greatly reduced compared to the diurnal pattern in the difference obtained from the regular (non-SDR) TWSTFT equipment. However, the diurnal reduction in the NIST/OP and NIST/PTB SDR TWSTFT differences is not as significant as in the OP/PTB link. This is a strong indication that the application of SDR receivers has the ability to significantly improve the stability of some TWSTFT links. In this paper, we will analyze the diurnal reduction using the SDR receivers for the three links and study the dominant causes for the diurnal effect in the Europe-Europe and transatlantic TWSTFT links.

Proceedings Title

Proceedings of the PTTI 2017 Meeting

Conference Dates

January 31-February 2, 2017

Conference Location

Monterey, CA

Conference Title

Precise Time and Time Interval Meeting (PTTI) 2017

Pub Type

Conferences

Keywords

diurnal, instability, SDR, TWSTFT

Citation

Zhang, V. , Parker, T. , Achkar, J. , Piester, D. , Huang, Y. , Lin, S. and Jiang, Z. (2017), A Study on Using the SDR Receiver for the Europe-Europe and Transatlantic TWSTFT Links, Proceedings of the PTTI 2017 Meeting, Monterey, CA (Accessed April 19, 2024)