Long-term GPS carrier-phase time transfer noise: A study based on seven GPS receivers at NIST

Abstract

This paper reports a preliminary study of the long-term GPS carrier-phase time transfer noise, based on seven NIST GPS receivers. We find that the difference in carrier-phase time-transfer result using any two GPS receivers over 100 days can change by ~ 0.5 ns (peak-to-peak) in most cases and by ~ 1.3 ns (peak-to-peak) in some extreme cases. This suggests that a more frequent GPS calibration is needed to achieve sub-nanosecond GPS timing accuracy.