Development of an open, low-cost time-transfer system for traceable time and frequency applications
Project description
The motivation for the proposal arose from a recent workshop where a number of participants indicated interest in establishing remote time services. These services would be greatly facilitated by an open, flexible, and low-cost system.
The purpose of the project is to develop a low-cost time-transfer system (TTS) for remote dissemination of national time and frequency standards. The TTS will be an entirely open design. All software and custom hardware designs will be freely available.
The TTS fills a niche not currently addressed by commercial devices which are oriented to highly precise time-transfer using high-end GNSS receivers. In particular, it enables new applications such as auditing of networked devices which depend on accurate time.
A key goal was to build and ship a system to each of the participating NMIs: NMIA, NMIM, NIMT and NPLI.
The project is still very active, both in software development and testing and integration of new hardware. As of 2022, one NMI has adopted the technology for providing services to its clients. Three papers have been published and a number of conference presentations also made.
The project website is http://openttp.org
