The first recorded system of timekeeping dates back to the Yaraldi, who have been in South Australia since 8,000 BCE. They divided the day into seven parts based on the sun’s position in the sky. Since then, timekeeping has been steadily gaining precision. We have divided the day into 24 hours, 1,440 minutes, 86,400 seconds. But all clocks, no matter the level of precision they are measuring, face the same problem, they won’t stay precise forever.

Introduction to Time Synchronisation

Making sure the whole world has the same time requires global effort. As Harold Hauglin, Head of Timekeeping for Jestervesent (the Norwegian Metrology Service), explains, “Most countries have one—or actually several—national timing labs that generate the UTC time scale. So we have a number of atomic clocks, and we generate the Norwegian UTC timescale.”

Hauglin continues, “As part of that we report measurements of all our clocks against our timescale. And we share the observations of that timing receiver to the International Bureau of Weights and Measurements, BIPM, together with our clock measurements, so that data and similar data from about 80 different UTC labs around the world are collected daily. And from this, the BIPM computes International Atomic Time.”

450 atomic clocks are stationed in 80 countries around the world. They all report what they think the time is, effectively creating a global consensus for Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Despite the name, coordinated universal time is actually just measuring Earth time. A whole different organisation deals with solar time.

Hauglin explains, “There’s a bureau called the International Earth and Rotation Service, which pays attention to the difference between the Solar Time UT, and the Atomic Time, UTC or TIA.” 

The Earth’s rotation has its own irregularities and is very gradually slowing down. Harold adds, “If the discrepancy between the solar time and UTC approaches a whole second or 0.9 seconds, they announce now will be a time for a new leap second.”

The Need for Precision

In the modern world, with millions of computers calculating and communicating at high speeds, knowing the time to the nearest second is no longer enough.

Hauglin puts this into perspective: “If you ask the average person what you think you need in terms of accurate time? Maybe they answer a minute, some will actually get annoyed if things are not in sync within a few seconds because you can actually notice that, but in reality then, and I’ll try to use this as a device to explain why we are concerned about nanoseconds, how long is a nanosecond? A nanosecond is 30 centimetres. Okay, a microsecond is 300 metres. So, the question for the average person is “are you happy with your GPS device giving you a position within 300 metres and most people say no, right?”

Ahmad Byagowi, a research scientist at Meta and the Project Lead for the Time Appliance project, highlights the need for high levels of time synchronisation in other areas such as gaming, “Some of these professional gamers, they relocate and go live close by where the servers are, to basically get an advantage for that. I don’t know, whatever milliseconds that they get faster to be by the server.”

But there are also more serious applications. The telecoms and energy industry need accurate time synchronisation to keep their assets running and secure. Roel DeVries, a business development manager at Fugro, explains, “Let’s take the power grids as an example, there are measurements being done all over the power grid. These measurements are being compared and actions are being taken.”

With better time synchronisation, grid management can be improved. Hauglin adds, “In the power sector, you can do very well synchronised measurements from geographically distant points in the grid. And once you can rely on measurements being timestamped accurately, you can collect them and compare them. And you can for instance, calculate rapidly how much power is flowing in this segment of the grid.”

Achieving Synchronisation

So how do we synchronise time? For things on a small geographical scale, using wires usually does the trick. Heiko Gerstung, managing director of Meinburg, gives an example, “If you are looking at a local requirement, a printing machine, for example, which has the different colours in different printing stations and the paper is running through the machine at a very high pace, you need to synchronise your different colours, time synchronise them so that whenever the blue dots needs to be right next to the red dot, that is done in a very accurate way.”

But it gets much more complicated when you want to synchronise time across the globe. Gerstung explains, “When we talk about regulation in the finance industry, you need first of all, absolute time. And the time stamping happens sometimes on different continents. So you have a trading company in the US. And if they send an order to a European stock exchange, this order needs to be time stamped when it’s sent in the US, and it needs to be timestamped when it has been received and processed in Europe.”

The technology that changed the game for time synchronisation was GPS. Gerstung notes, “Specifically when we talk about highly accurate timing, then with the advent of GPS, basically the availability of highly accurate time globally, without having to pull the cable, basically appeared on the scene.”

GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) is crucial for time synchronisation. Hauglin explains, “GNSS satellites are essentially very accurate clocks in orbit. The GNSS satellite will send out a message essentially saying, “Hello, I’m satellite number one, I sent this message exactly at 12 o’clock, and I was at this exact position” and your receiver gets that information and it gets it from more than one satellite.”

However, GNSS time synchronisation does have some pitfalls, particularly around security. Roel notes, “We’ve seen spoofing attacks taking place, especially in military active areas, they’re also jamming attacks as well.”

Jamming and spoofing present serious security concerns. Heiko explains, “The signal is very weak. And that in turn makes it very easy to disturb it. If you build a very small radio transmitter, and that radio transmitter transmits on the same frequency on the same radio frequency, where the GPS signals are coming in, you can disturb and very easily completely wipe out that signal for this specific receiver.”

Spoofing is an even more concerning threat as Gerstung explains, “Spoofing means the signal is not just destroyed or disturbed, but a manipulated signal is basically transmitted. And by using a slightly higher power level than the original signal, the receiver will then pick up the spoof signal, the wrong signal instead of the original one. And that is something where the receiver, by definition, first of all, cannot really see a problem if the receiver is not seeing a problem, because it still receives a signal.”

AtomiChron: A New Solution

To address these issues, Fugro developed the AtomiChron system. The AtomiChron solution by Fugro is a breakthrough in time synchronisation, offering accuracy at the nanosecond level—an astonishing improvement over the microsecond accuracy provided by traditional GNSS systems. 

De Vries from Fugro highlights this leap: “The typical level of accuracy from GNSS can be around a microsecond, but the new AtomiChron system is accurate to the nanosecond, that is a billionth of a second.” This precision is achieved through a network of roughly 100 reference stations globally, which collect and process satellite data, broadcasting it via a communication satellite to receivers worldwide. 

Gerstung explains, “It’s really mind-blowingly accurate and this is achieved by providing additional data to the receivers.” This enhanced accuracy allows receivers to determine satellite positions with exceptional precision, significantly improving time synchronisation across various applications.

Beyond accuracy, AtomiChron addresses critical security issues, particularly GNSS signal spoofing. De Vries discusses the implementation of navigation message authentication, stating, “We can actually tell the receiver that the data received from the satellite is authentic data or not.” This capability ensures that only genuine data is used, protecting the system from malicious interference.

The security features are particularly appealing to industries, as De Vries notes, “The bigger companies even including Meinberg and Viavi today see more advantage in the navigation message authentication that’s preventing spoofing than the high accuracy.” With such robust security measures and unparalleled precision, AtomiChron not only sets a new standard in time synchronisation but also opens up new possibilities for industries that rely on precise timing.

Time keeping has long been one of humanity’s greatest challenges, but with Atomichron and the satellites up in orbit, we have reached a stage where we can accurately keep time and share it around the world at a greater accuracy than any application requires.