GPS World

Tag: fiber

  • It’s about time for the electrical grid

    It’s about time for the electrical grid

    On March 24, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) released information about a program designed to provide resilient timing to the electrical grid by fiber.

    The Center for Alternative Synchronization and Timing (CAST) is located at and led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and has been underway for almost two years.

    More than just an academic center for research, CAST is building a network of atomic master clocks and methods of time delivery by fiber that will ensure power grids always have failsafe and resilient time.

    Timing is essential to a wide variety of equipment and network functions essential to electrical grids. Most of these use time signals that come directly from, or can be traced back to, signals from GPS.

    Electrical-grid timing dependent equipment and networks

    • Transmission-line fault detection
    • Frequency measurement
    • Synchrophasors/phasor measurement units
    • Internet-based market transactions
    • Substation control/resynchronization
    • Disturbance monitoring event recorders
    • Protective relays
    • Bulk metering
    • SCADA networks
    • Synchrophasor networks

    An industry expert once observed, “Electrical grids won’t fail without accurate time signals, but they are impossible to manage. And who wants an unmanageable grid?”

    According to David Wells, program leader for CAST at DOE headquarters, “It has been no secret there are vulnerabilities within the timing and synchronizations platforms used by the energy sector.” Wells said that for grid timing “a secure, verifiable, and reliable solution is paramount.”

    He sees CAST as a necessary part of tech evolution for electrical grids and service. “The sector has been going through a transition from analog to digital and then from digital to internet protocol (IP). Technologies have been bolted on, but with each bolt-on added, access vulnerabilities are added as well. Embedded stratum timing systems based through digital carriers allowed our networks to be closed-loop (zero-trust) for 50 years. During the age of IP conversion, the ability to provide timing via stratum was lost, so the sector moved to GPS and NTP, which provided precision at the locations, but lack security, validation and true wide-area synchronization.”

    CAST’s goal is to establish “true closed-loop (zero-trust) with secure bi-direction timing validation and synchronization over IP networks,” with multiple clocking sources, according to Wells. The system, he said, will be able to reach all power substations and remote locations.

    While Wells, his office and ORNL are the primary players, a whole cast of other organizations contributes to the effort. These include DOE’s Office of Electricity; its Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response; Savannah River National Laboratory; Sandia National Laboratory; and industry partners.

    CAST will not be creating new infrastructure, but rather leveraging fiber already in place. “This is not a dedicated fiber network for timing,” said Wells. “CAST uses existing fiber in the form of dark fiber (underutilized fiber), commercial fiber and optical ground wire, and works with wireless technologies to extend secure timing and synchronization to users.”

    While CAST is narrowly focused on electrical grids and fiber, some see a potential for it to be the basis of a wider national security effort.

    Marc Weiss is a timing expert and consultant who served for more than 40 years as a theoretical physicist for the National Institute of Standards and Technology. “CAST could be part of the foundation of an architecture that benefits all sectors and citizens, not just power grids,” he said. “The Department of Transportation has identified the need for Americans to have access to timing signals from space, from terrestrial wireless transmitters, and via fiber to have the kind of resilience they need. So, CAST is certainly a big step in the right direction.”

    DOE’s DarkNet initiative is a joint initiative by the Office of Electricity and the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER). Additional information on DarkNet and CAST can be found at https://darknet.ornl.gov

     

  • First Fix: National timing architecture needed now

    First Fix: National timing architecture needed now

    Headshot: Dana Goward
    Dana Goward, President, Resilient PNT Foundation

    The Empire State Building sits atop a massive and solid foundation that hardly anyone ever sees. Above ground it has 2.8 million square feet of offices and hundreds of businesses. It houses 15,000 workers. Yet it would all come crashing down if the underlying and unseen foundation weren’t incredibly strong and dependable.

    Timing is the unseen foundation of every networked technology, digital broadcast, financial transaction, electrical grid management and of most navigation systems, just to name a few applications. Yet, as GPS World readers know, signals from our dominant source of timing — GPS — are very faint and easily disrupted.

    Short term, localized disruptions happen all the time, and many systems have adapted. A delivery driver using a jammer to hide from his boss is unlikely to disrupt a cell base station as he passes by, for example.

    Photo: Georgijevic/E+/Getty Images
    Photo: Georgijevic/E+/Getty Images

    But more serious threats are out there. More and more hobbyists are finding ways to spoof receivers. Every few decades the sun flares strongly enough to fry satellites or charge the ionosphere. And because there are so few alternatives, GPS and other GNSS have become huge, tempting targets for adversary nations, terrorists, and sophisticated hackers.
    Instead of Manhattan bedrock, our timing foundation is sometimes more like shifting sands.

    Systems engineering tells us that, if something is essential, there ought to be two, three or more independent ways of receiving it. Most aircraft, for example, have two or three systems powering the flight controls — because controlled flight is important!
    The white paper “A Resilient National Timing Architecture” outlines how the United States can leverage existing infrastructure and provide all citizens two, and many of them three, independent paths to coordinated universal time (UTC).

    It proposes a national timing back- bone of mature technologies with very different failure modes — GNSS, eLoran and fiber. This combination will provide rock-solid timing at the 500 ns or better level of accuracy relative to UTC everywhere across the nation, and at 100 ns or better in major metro areas. Users accessing two or more systems would be nearly bulletproof to timing service disruptions.

    The National Timing Resilience and Security Act of 2018 mandated a terrestrial system to back up GPS timing. Our white paper provides a path forward.

    Complying with the law while benefiting current and future technologies should be sufficient motivation. If it isn’t, we must also realize that not acting on this will continue to place us behind other nations such as the United Kingdom, South Korea, Russia and China — all of whom are actively reinforcing their national timing systems.

    The task will not be a simple one. Yet America was able to overcome the expense and difficulties of building GPS, at the time the world’s most refined and complex technology, and put it in space. By comparison, establishing a resilient national timing architecture using existing technology in our homeland would be child’s play.

    Timing is essential. It is infrastructure for our infrastructure. If our national timing is weak, so is everything that is built upon it.

    We will profit from ensuring our timing is as strong, resilient, and easily accessed as possible.

    And we will suffer if it is neglected.