Voice Announcements of Time: A New Approach

J. Jespersen, G. Kamas, M. Weiss

Abstract: A recent survey by NBS reveals that the voice time announcements provided by radio stations WWV and WWVH are used more often than any other features of the time signals. It is the purpose of this paper to describe some recent NBS work aimed at exploring a different technique for generating voice time announcements. The idea is simply this--a time code from any source, such as those broadcast by WWV, WWVH, WWVB, CHU, or the GOES satellite is translated electronically into a voice announcement. This approach is attractive for several reasons. (1) In many areas voice time announcements are weak and noisy and it is difficult to understand them. In addition, there may be interference from other "standard time broadcast" stations. It is often easy, under such conditions, to detect and error correct a time code. The "cleaned-up" time code is then electronically converted into a noise-free voice announcement. (2) Normal time broadcasts provide voice announcements only at regular intervals of time such as every minute. With the code-voice conversion technique, a voice announcement is available on demand. (3) Any time code signal may be used.
Published in: Proceedings of the 11th Annual Precise Time and Time Interval Systems and Applications Meeting
November 27 - 29, 1979
Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
Pages: 363 - 384
Cite this article: Jespersen, J., Kamas, G., Weiss, M., "Voice Announcements of Time: A New Approach," Proceedings of the 11th Annual Precise Time and Time Interval Systems and Applications Meeting, Greenbelt, Maryland, November 1979, pp. 363-384.
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