PMEL Forum

K Sections => K3/4 - Waveform Analysis & RF Generation => Topic started by: Hawaii596 on 05-07-2013 -- 16:08:34

Title: Calibration of GPS Disciplined Oscillator
Post by: Hawaii596 on 05-07-2013 -- 16:08:34
Reading up on how to establish traceability of GPS for audit purposes.  Wondering if anyone else is usgin the method I'll describe below:

Reading a NIST white paper: "The Use of GPS Disciplined Oscillators as Primary Frequency Standards for Calibration and Metrology
Laboratories" it looks like to establish traceability using a GPS with GPSDO (disciplined oscillator - which my Symmetricom has), it looks like I need to develop a procedure which assigns an uncertainty - in my case, there is a 1 day uncertainty or shorter periods with a little lower accuracy (I'll have to decide which we want to use - the best accuracy requires a full day of integration, I think).  Then I have to have a method to regularly monitor satellite lock.  Ours has a time clock I think showing how many hours since last loss of lock.  And on the NIST website they have plots of error that can be pulled.  I think its a little late in the day... anyone have a similar process they could share, or detailed thoughts about how to tackle this (to be added to scope of accreditation). 
Title: Re: Calibration of GPS Disciplined Oscillator
Post by: RFCAL on 05-08-2013 -- 09:22:26
For A2LA purposes,. you can get all the data required from the following website:http://www.nist.gov/pml/div688/grp40/gpsarchive.cfm.
We use a Fluke 910R and this website info is all we need to show every quarter. Typically our 910R is at 0.1-12 parts and is self correcting.