Septentrio’s mosaic-T is built specifically for resilient and precise time and frequency synchronization under challenging conditions. (Photo: Septentrio)
Fugro has signed a tri-party cooperation agreement with GNSS receiver company Septentrio and synchronization equipment manufacturer Meinberg to launch the Fugro AtomiChron real-time synchronization and authentication service.
Numerous sectors rely on resilient and highly accurate time synchronization, including telecommunications, finance and energy. The timing technology eliminates time drift caused by clocks counting time at slightly different rates, and provides extreme stability that surpasses current precision frequency standards.
With up to sub-nanosecond accuracy, Fugro AtomiChron includes Navigation Message Authentication (NMA), ensuring reception of genuine GNSS signals and time synchronization improvements. Integrated anti-spoofing detection further prevents interference with GNSS timing signals providing accuracy, authentication, validity and security for end users.
The agreement ensures that the Fugro AtomiChron service will be available in new Septentrio mosaic-T GNSS receivers, as well as a selection of Meinberg GNSS clocks, without the need for additional physical interfaces or separate antennas.
“Septentrio is a forerunner in the area of robust and resilient GNSS solutions,” said Jan Van Hees, business development director at Septentrio. “With the addition of the unique Fugro AtomiChron service, we are pleased to further strengthen our offering and provide our customers even more accurate and reliable solutions for resilient GNSS timing.”
Net Insight’s sync solution becomes fully PTP-standard compliant with synchronization module for 5G and other mission-critical networks
Net Insight has selected Meinberg’s precision time protocol (PTP) software stack — Precision TimeNet — to implement full PTP functionality in all of its platforms.
The Precision TimeNet solution offers a GNSS-independent delivery of high-accuracy timing across any IP vendor network, which can significantly reduce the cost and rollout times of 5G and other mission-critical networks.
In 2021, Meinberg also delivered a synchronization module to Net Insight’s Nimbra MSR 300 series, providing full PTP IEEE 1588v2 interoperability and GNSS integration for 5G networks. The new module is part of the Nimbra Time Node, an important component of the Precision TimeNet solution.
Net Insight licensed the PTP stack from Oregano Systems, owned by Meinberg, to deliver network synchronization for both media and 5G networks. Meinberg leverages Net Insight’s network synchronization capabilities to serve customers across the telecom, fintech, government, and power telecom industries. The expansion into a strategic technology partnership means that both companies will utilize their expertise in time synchronization to deploy solutions that remove the challenges of reliable precision timing over any IP network.
“The shift to IP is accelerating, making precision timing key to the successful deployment of new applications,” said Heiko Gerstung, managing director of Meinberg. “Net Insight’s Precision TimeNet offers a unique solution on the market that we see a strong and growing need for, across multiple industries. We’re excited to be working with Net Insight, a leader in mission-critical IP transport, to drive innovation and enable our customers to benefit from GNSS-independent time synchronization.”
“Net Insight has been developing time transfer for nearly two decades, delivering industry-leading time accuracy and resilience over IP networks,” said Per Lindgren, CTO and co-founder at Net Insight. “When expanding our synchronization business into new markets, integrating with the IEEE 1588 PTP standard was key to enhancing our interoperability. Teaming up with Meinberg, a leader in time and frequency synchronization, was the obvious choice.. We’re excited that our joint expertise in IP networking and time synchronization will enable us to reinvent precision timing for our customers.”
Architecture of the X-Survey antenna. (Image: Harxon)
Blocking interference
Interference can be blocked at the data-collection stage, using an advanced antenna.
Harxon’s X-Survey is a compact high-precision GNSS antenna. It provides superior navigation and communication performance in surveying applications. A frontal band-pass filter setting effectively rejects out-of-band signals before they enter the low-noise amplifier of the antenna for signal augmentation.
Meanwhile, the filter itself has insertion loss, making a low insertion loss filter a prerequisite for optimal system noise reduction. To avoid this situation, X-Survey employs ceramic filter with low signal loss and in-band flatness to significantly improve system anti-interference capability and ensure reliable signal receiving.
The mosaic module provides AIM+ mitigation technology. (Image: Septentrio)
Septentrio began to tackle the interference problem more than 20 years go, designing and manufacturing high-precision GNSS receiver technology with emphasis on reliability and robustness. The result is Advanced Interference Monitoring and Mitigation (AIM+) technology which secures the company’s GNSS receivers against jamming and spoofing interference. AIM+ has recently been upgraded with an extended anti-spoofing functionality.
Building on its existing spoofing detection, Septentrio has developed a new anti-spoofing algorithm for its commercial receivers. The algorithm leverages Galileo Open Service Navigation Message Authentication (OSNMA) for spoofing resistance. It was developed in the framework of the GSA FANTASTIC project with the goal of improving the security of timing in critical infrastructure.
Mobile devices and cloud applications increasingly rely on GNSS technology used by telecom companies. Having secure and robust GNSS receivers in telecom infrastructure is key to reliable mobile and positioning services.
Alternative signals
Prototype design of the PNT-5500. (Image: Jackson Labs)
A new reference receiver, Jackson Labs’ PNT-5500, includes a custom Satelles/Iridium (STL) and GPS receiver, and an optional Edge Grandmaster/PTP1588 capability.
Using STL signals received directly through a small antenna mounted on the device, the PNT-5500 provides nanosecond timing synchronization in GPS-challenged environments, including deep indoors (no rooftop antenna required). It provides secure timing during GPS jamming and spoofing events. The unit is designed for high-volume, low-cost telecom small-cell synchronization, and is optionally available with holdover oscillators such as DOCXO and CSAC atomic clocks.
While GPS is vulnerable to jamming and spoofing, the PNT-5500 uses the Iridium infrastructure to provide assured timing that is impervious to spoofing and provides 1,000X higher signal strength compared to GPS, producing jamming resilience and deep-indoor reception. The system is designed to be fully interoperable with legacy equipment, for a low-cost, fully-deployed Assured PNT capability alternative to GNSS today.
Assessing vulnerability
Image: Qascom
Qascom offers several robust PNT services and products, including vulnerability assessment, robust navigation and interference localization.
Vulnerability assessment is the key proactive measure, using cutting-edge signal generators to design and test tomorrow’s receivers. For example, Qascom’s QA707 GNSS simulator tests receivers against emerging jamming and spoofing threats, allowing OEMs to discover in advance any potential vulnerability that may affect the availability and the integrity of the signal.
Robust navigation is supported by advanced mitigation algorithms, equipped with pre and post-correlation algorithms, as well as the inclusion of sensor fusion and dead-reckoning features.
Qascom’s attack detection products include external monitoring networks that support GNSS receivers. These networks provide an accurate perception of the operational environment, allowing threat characterization, classification and forecast. For instance, Qascom’s QB100 enables the simultaneous threat detection and localization by means of a monitoring cluster that delivers 24/7 situational awareness to a set of target receivers within the protection area.
Reliable timing
Meinberg provides GNSS timing solutions for nearly every application type. Its reliable systems are based on firmware built from the ground up by an in-house team of expert engineers. All Meinberg firmware is constantly checked and updated to ensure it adapts to evolving industry standards.
The company’s synchronization systems use a built-in Meinberg GPS receiver or combined GPS/GLONASS clock. They also support a broad range of reference time sources, including 1 PPS, 10 MHz, inter-range instrumentation group time codes (both direct current level shift and amplitude modulated), or network time protocol (NTP) servers. This redundancy in synchronization sources means Meinberg’s systems are protected against a loss of signal. Furthermore, to ensure the correctness of the reference time and date, an intuitive Secure Hybrid System (SHS) feature includes an independent secondary clock for enhanced plausibility checks.
For superior holdover performance, the Meinberg XHERB (with one or two Rubidium modules from Stanford Research) can be added to the Meinberg Intelligent Modular Synchronization (IMS) time and frequency systems. If the reference clock loses its sync source, the XHE chassis will provide the sync reference for the IMS chassis based on its holdover performance.
On April 6, the GPS system used by many organizations for critical infrastructure will perform a rollover. The rollover is the result of a legacy GPS navigation message which gives a week number as a 10-bit parameter.
As a result, the week number parameter in the GPS navigation message needs to reset to zero every 1024 weeks. That means from that date onwards, users are likely to start seeing rollover problems in GPS receivers that aren’t programmed to cope with the week number reset.
Meinberg, a GNSS receiver maker based in Germany, has a different approach with its GPS receivers. Instead of a 10-bit parameter, Meinberg’s firmware uses a 16-bit week number, and it is incremented at the end of each week.
This means that by the first rollover on Aug. 21, 1999, the week number sent by the satellites rolled from 1023 back to 0, while the internal (Meinberg) week number simply counted to 1024, then to 1025 and so forth. So, on April 6, the GPS week counter will reset to 0, but Meinberg’s internal one, which will have been reached the value of 2047 by that time, will continue to count in a consecutive order.
More information about the GPS Week Number Rollover can be found on our Meinberg’s Knowledge Base.
