Steering Strategies for the Master Clock of the U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO)

Demetrios Matsakis, Mihran Miranian and Paul A. Koppang

Abstract:	The USNO Master Clock (MC) is the DoD standard for precise time, to which GPS time is steered. It is also the world's most precise on-line instrument for time and frequency measurements, and its stability is expected to improve with planned upgrades. The current steering strategy for the MC optimizes time accuracy, but it can be adjusted to better meet user needs. Different steering strategies are presented, and they differ in how they deal with compromises between frequency stability and time accuracy. The strategies would ideally be set by user requirements; however, most users are anonymous and in general their requirements are difficult to quantify. Most users are not affected by these decisions at all, as the MC stability over periods less than 5 days is determined almost entirely by the USNO masers. The stability of GPS is also not significantly affected by the choice of strategies, as it is steered by acceleration using a "bang-bang" algorithm chosen to optimize frequency stability (Brown, 1990).
Published in:	Proceedings of the IAIN World Congress and the 56th Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (2000) June 26 - 28, 2000 The Catamaran Resort Hotel San Diego, CA
Pages:	791 - 795
Cite this article:	Matsakis, Demetrios, Miranian, Mihran, Koppang, Paul A., "Steering Strategies for the Master Clock of the U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO)," Proceedings of the IAIN World Congress and the 56th Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (2000), San Diego, CA, June 2000, pp. 791-795.
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