Millisecond pulsar augmented atomic clock ensemble timescale algorithm

Yang Liu

doi:10.1016/j.measurement.2025.117033

2025-06-01

PRE

Yang Liu

Xiangwei Zhu *

Changfeng Chen

DOI：10.1016/j.measurement.2025.117033

原文链接

摘要

En 中文

High-precision time synchronization is significant to fundamental physics and measurement science. And stable timescales are the basis for high-precision time synchronization. Timescales are mainly established based on atomic clocks. Despite the good short-term stability of atomic clocks, their long-term stability is compromised by frequency drift and noises. This seriously reduces the accuracy of time synchronization. In contrast, millisecond pulsars exhibit excellent long-term stability. Combining atomic clocks with pulsars in timekeeping helps to improve stability performance which is of great significance for improving time synchronization accuracy. Therefore, the millisecond pulsar augmented atomic clock ensemble timescale algorithm is proposed. Firstly, frequency drifts of hydrogen masers are eliminated with reference of the pulsar and the long-term stability of atomic clocks is improved. Then, the weighted average algorithm with special weight design is proposed to establish the joint ensemble timescale. Experiment results show that the joint ensemble timescale improved the Allan deviation of 2.83 x 10-13 and 8.82 x 10-13 on one-year and three-year averaging time compared with atomic time. For short-term stability, the joint ensemble timescale improved the Allan deviation of 1.47 x 10-13 and 2.01 x 10-13 on one-day and one-month averaging time compared with pulsar time. The proposed algorithm is expected to establish stable time to achieve high-precision time synchronization in measurement science.

Keyword:

Atomic time

Frequency drift calibration

Measurement science

Pulsar time

Weighted average