GPS World

Tag: Marc Weiss

  • 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

     

  • RAND: Federal investment in timing network for GPS backup likely worthwhile

    RAND: Federal investment in timing network for GPS backup likely worthwhile

    Study’s emphasis, timing of release, work against that, some say

    timing architecture network PNT futuristic
    Image: Panuwat Sikham/iStock/Getty Images Plus/Getty Images

    The stated goal of a recently published RAND study was to answer a question from Congress about what should be done to back up and complement the nation’s GPS. One of its findings was that the government should consider investing in a national timing network.

    Yet the study’s report emphasizes the wrong things, according to some. So much so that it is working against establishment of a timing network to reinforce GPS.

    Report Misleading

    “The main thrust of the study’s report is that we don’t need another GPS-like, system,” said Pat Diamond. “That has always been fairly obvious. I don’t know anyone who has ever advocated for duplicating GPS.” Diamond is CEO and founder of a network company and is a member of the president’s National Space-based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) Advisory Board.

    “By pounding so hard on the ‘don’t duplicate GPS’ drum, RAND hides its more important findings,” he said. “The public message comes across as there is no need to do anything.”

    Diamond thinks the study should have better highlighted the things the federal government should do. “That is really the question Congress wanted answered,” he said.

    RAND’s study supports four federal initiatives that “… appear to be cost-effective or close to cost-effective.” Included are a “timing-only” GPS-backup and support of high performance “geographically limited” systems.

    Timing Essential, GPS Backup Needed

    Cover: NSTAC
    Cover: NSTAC

    GPS timing signals are used in a wide variety of technologies including cell phones, IT networks, digital broadcast, first responders’ hand-held radios, and to synchronize electrical grids. Yet these signals from space are weak and easily disrupted.

    A recommendation for a GPS timing backup was part of a report to President Biden last month from the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC). The group of telecom CEOs and senior executives urged the administration to fund “a National Timing Architecture.”

    A timing backup for GPS is also a long-standing recommendation of the president’s National Space-based PNT Advisory Board.

    “There are few things more important to tech infrastructure today and tomorrow than timing,” according to Marc Weiss who was a lead researcher at the National Institutes of Standards and Technology for 35 years.

    Weiss, along with Pat Diamond, co-authored the white paper “A Resilient National Timing Architecture” cited in the NSTAC report to the president.

    Cost-Benefit Might Be Wrong Approach

    Cover: Thomas Dunne Books
    Cover: Thomas Dunne Books

    The RAND study was a cost-benefit analysis, which some have argued was not the best approach.

    “Cost-benefit is always tricky,” says Greg Winfree, Director of the Texas Transportation Institute. “There are always a lot of assumptions. Small changes to any of the inputs can radically change the outcomes.” Winfree led civil PNT efforts during the Obama administration as an official at the Department of Transportation (DOT).

    “One of my big concerns is that GPS is so important to so many things in America, that it is one of the most attractive targets for our adversaries. At least one alternate PNT that most people can access takes the bullseye off GPS,” Winfree said.

    Scott Pace, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University (GWU) agrees a diversity of PNT sources is important. At a recent GWU event, Pace commented having an alternative to GPS will contribute to national security and improve global stability. It will “lower the pressure on us to escalate and respond” should GPS satellites be damaged, or services disrupted. Pace was the Executive Secretary of the National Space Council in the Trump administration.

    In the book The Russia Trap, author George Beebe has similar concerns, citing the lack of a backup for GPS as a technology resilience gap. Russia, China, and Iran all have terrestrial backups for PNT signals from space while the United States does not. Beebe says this is a weakness that can be exploited and could lead to an escalating series of exchanges resulting in all-out war.

    Government Investment in Location Services

    The RAND study suggestion for the government to invest in highly accurate PNT services in some limited geographic areas cited emergency responders’ needs for precise location. Federal investment will likely be required, it says, as commercial entities cannot make a business case everywhere service is needed.

    GWU economics professor Diana Furchtgott-Roth has written that the federal government needs to provide a complement to GPS. She served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary at DOT from 2019 to 2021 leading civil PNT issues for the government.

    “Without federal participation, commercial providers won’t ensure adequate resilient services for everyone. Some sectors, such as finance, will have it, but others won’t. This is a matter of national and homeland security. The RAND report did not emphasize this sufficiently.”

    Questionable Timing and Motivation

    “This is a particularly bad time for a confused message,” said a congressional staff member speaking about the RAND study. “Congress mandated a timing backup for GPS in 2018, though the project was never funded. There is real momentum this year to provide that funding, but the way this study reads works against that.”

    Others see the structure of the study’s report and the timing of its release as a deliberate effort to derail budget negotiations. One retired Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official sees a pattern but is at a loss to explain the motivations behind it.

    “RAND’s study was completed in 2019, and it was used as the basis for a DHS report to Congress in April 2020. But DHS didn’t tell Congress about RAND’s findings on a timing network and other actions the government should take,” they said.

    “The study being made public now saying ‘do not back up GPS’ smells like a deliberate attempt to derail funding for the timing system. Something two presidential advisory boards, telecom leaders, RAND and so many others agree is needed.”

    “Why would someone want to do that?” they asked. “Why would they want to keep America’s PNT so much weaker than China’s, Russia’s, and those of other countries?”

  • Precise time for all: Paper calls for resilient national timing

    Precise time for all: Paper calls for resilient national timing

    Image: RNT Foundation
    Image: RNT Foundation

    A new white paper sponsored by the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation (RNT Foundation) discusses the need and implementation of a reliable and resilient national timing architecture that will include space-based assets. This system-of-systems architecture — GNSS, terrestrial eLoran broadcasts and fiber — is essential to underpin today’s technology and support development of tomorrow’s systems, according to the executive summary of A Resilient National Timing Architecture.

    “Everyone in the developed world needs precise time, all the time, whether they know it or not,” said Marc Weiss, one of the paper’s authors and an internationally recognized expert on timing and synchronization. “It is a foundation of every networked technology, digital broadcast, and most navigation systems, to name just a few critical uses.”

    Three Paths to Precise Time

    “Precise time is so important that everyone needs at least three independent methods of getting it. So, if one, or even two, fail it is not a national disaster,” said Pat Diamond, co-author of the paper. “Our proposed architecture calls for precise time via GNSS, terrestrial eLoran broadcasts and fiber.” Diamond is a long-time network designer, developer, and entrepreneur. He is also a member of the U.S. National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Advisory Board.

    Diamond also pointed out that these three methods should be the backbone for timing distribution in the U.S., but won’t be the only methods. “What we are describing is a baseline architecture that will be added to,” he said. “It is a starting point. We envision in the paper additional distribution methods like time from other satellites, user clocks, and so on, all being part of the mix.”

    Government Leadership

    The U.S. federal government has a leadership interest and responsibility in all of this, according to the paper. Nations have long recognized the military and commercial advantages of determining and distributing precise time. Great Britain’s Longitude Act of 1714 was really about developing a chronometer to support safe navigation of Royal Navy and British merchant fleet. In the United States, the U.S. Naval Observatory has been keeping and distributing a national time scale time since 1845.

    “Just because the feds have an important leadership role, doesn’t mean they have to build and own a bunch of systems,” said Dana A. Goward, the paper’s third co-author and executive director of the RNT Foundation. “There are a variety of ways these systems can be established. Public-private-partnerships, subscription contracts like the FAA did with their air traffic ADS-B system, and cooperative agreements are all examples. As we move forward with 5G telecommunications and perhaps even timing and navigation, it will be increasingly important to have a rock solid timing infrastructure to support it all.”

    The National Timing Resilience and Security Act of 2018 requires the U.S. Department of Transportation to establish a terrestrial system to backup GPS timing services by December of this year. While the department does not appear to be on track to meet that goal, it completed a technology demonstration program for GPS backup technologies earlier this year. Two companies demonstrated timing distribution by fiber. Another two demonstrated eLoran.

    Many Pieces Already in Place

    One of the benefits of the proposed architecture is that much of what is called for is already in place, according to the paper. “We already have fiber networks, NAPs (network access points). eLoran is mature and has been deployed by the Brits. And the U.S. government owns enough former Loran-C sites to establish a nationwide eLoran network,” Diamond said. “All we need is a bit of money and some engineering work to put this all together.”