Recent MCS Improvements to GPS Timing

Steven Hutsell

Abstract:	With the completion of a 24 operational satellite constellation, GPS is well capable of providing the timing accuracy and stability performance required by system specifications. Now that we’ve successfully reached this major milestone, the GPS community will need to address future timing enhancement proposals with extra prudence. This paper demonstrates how the Master Control Station (MCS) recently improved four operational aspects of GPS timing. These advancements include a re-structure of the MCS Kalman Filter partitions, a change to the GPS time steering magnitude, a software change allowing greater flexibility when utilizing United States Naval Observatory (USNO) data, and a long-awaited refinement to Rubidium clock drift rate estimation. The above enhancements have all significantly improved GPS accuracy and stability figures. As a by-product, this fine tuning has increased the MCS’s ability to evaluate the performance of individual atomic frequency standards and of MCS Kalman Filter estimation.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 7th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1994) September 20 - 23, 1994 Salt Palace Convention Center Salt Lake City, UT
Pages:	261 - 273
Cite this article:	Hutsell, Steven, "Recent MCS Improvements to GPS Timing," Proceedings of the 7th International Technical Meeting of the Satellite Division of The Institute of Navigation (ION GPS 1994), Salt Lake City, UT, September 1994, pp. 261-273.
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