An Algorithm for the Italian Atomic Time Scale

F. Cordara, G. Vizio, P. Tavella, V. Pettiti

Abstract:	During the past twenty years, the time scale at the IEN has been realized by a commercial cesium clock, selected from an ensemble of five, whose rate has been continuously steered towards UTC to maintain a long term agreement within 3 x 10^-13. A time scale algorithm, suitable for a small clock ensemble and capable of improving the medium and long term stability of the IEN time scale, has been recently designed taking care of reducing the effects of the seasonal variations and the sudden frequency anomalies of the single cesium clocks. The new time scale, TA(IEN), is obtained as a weighted average of the clock ensemble computed once a day from the time comparisons between the local reference UTC(IEN) and the single clocks. It is foreseen to include in the computation also ten cesium clocks maintained in other Italian laboratories to further improve its reliability and its long term stability. To implement this algorithm, a personal computer program in Quick Basic has been prepared and it has been tested at the ZEN time and frequency laboratory. The paper reports on the results obtained using this algorithm on the real clocks data relative to a period of about two years.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 25th Annual Precise Time and Time Interval Systems and Applications Meeting November 29 - 2, 1993 Ritz-Carlton Hotel Marina Del Rey, California
Pages:	389 - 400
Cite this article:	Cordara, F., Vizio, G., Tavella, P., Pettiti, V., "An Algorithm for the Italian Atomic Time Scale," Proceedings of the 25th Annual Precise Time and Time Interval Systems and Applications Meeting, Marina Del Rey, California, November 1993, pp. 389-400.
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