Caesium Atomic Clock Behaviour Analysis Method (CSBAM) for GNSS systems

Abstract

Atomic clocks are fundamental elements of a Satellite Navigation system due to its high accuracy and stability. Different clock technologies are used in satellites and in satellite navigation ground stations. The improvised clock technologies help in acquiring the position and timing with greater accuracy. To ensure the timing capabilities and position accuracy, the analysis of atomic clock performances is essential. The fundamental SI unit of time namely one Second or Second is derived from the caesium clock and hence caesium clocks serve as the primary frequency standards. caesium clocks are used in Satellite Navigation systems to obtain the accuracy and long term stability. In this work results of long term monitoring of caesium clock parameters during a clock failure conditions are presented and a new method is proposed for monitoring caesium frequency standard. The clock jumps may not be detected only by observing health parameters, hence in this paper a method is proposed for clock jump detection. The proposed method helps to detect the jumps in the clock and also helps in preventive maintenance of caesium clocks including the future failure predictions and hence helps to avoid sudden operations failure in a mission critical operational network.