A Proposed Time Transfer Experiment Between the USA and the South Pacific

John Luck, John Dunkley, Tim Armstrong, Al Gifford, Paul Landis, Scott Rasmussen, Paul Wheeler, Tom Bartholomew, Sam Stein

Abstract:	This paper describes the concept, architecture and preliminary details of an experiment directed towards providing continuous Ultra High Precision (UHP) time transfer between Washington, DC; Salisbury, SA Australia; Orroral Valley, ACT Australia; and Lower Hutt, New Zealand. It further describes a proposed method of distributing UTC(USNO) at a high level of precision to passive users over a broad area of the South Pacific. The concept is based on active two-way satellite time transfer from the United States Naval Observatory (USNO) to the proposed USNO Master Clock West (MCW) in Wahiwa, HI USA at the 1 nanosecond level using active satellite two-way time transfer augmented by Precise Positioning Service (PPS) of the Global Positioning System (GPS). MCW would act as an intermediate transfer/reference station, again linked to Salisbury at the 1 nanosecond level using active satellite two-way time transfer augmented by PPS GPS. From this point, time would be distributed within the region by two methods. The first is an existing TV line sync system using an Australian communications satellite (AUSSAT K1) which is useful to the 20 nanosecond level. The second approach is RF ranging and multilateration between Salisbury, Orroral Observatory, Lower Hutt and the AUSSAT B1 and B2 to be launched in 1992. Orroral Observatory will provide precise laser ranging to the AUSSAT B1/B2 retro reflectors which will reduce ephemeris related time transfer errors to below 1 nanosecond, The corrected position will be transmitted by both the time transfer modem and the existing TV line sync dissemination process. Multilateration has the advantage of being an all weather approach and when used with the laser ranging technique will provide a precise measurement of the propagation path delays. This will result in time transfer performance levels on the order of 10 nanoseconds to passive users in both Australia and New Zealand.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 23th Annual Precise Time and Time Interval Systems and Applications Meeting December 3 - 5, 1991 Pasadena, California
Pages:	351 - 363
Cite this article:	Luck, John, Dunkley, John, Armstrong, Tim, Gifford, Al, Landis, Paul, Rasmussen, Scott, Wheeler, Paul, Bartholomew, Tom, Stein, Sam, "A Proposed Time Transfer Experiment Between the USA and the South Pacific," Proceedings of the 23th Annual Precise Time and Time Interval Systems and Applications Meeting, Pasadena, California, December 1991, pp. 351-363.
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