39th Annual Precise Time and Time Interval (PTTI) Meeting ENSEMBLE TIME IN GNSS- PERFORMANCE REQUIREMENTS AND ALGORITHM TESTS

Any Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) relies on a highly stable and reliable System Time that has to meet high-performance requirements to enable GNSS services suitable for navigation and timing communities. The challenge is to guarantee this high performance continuously. The Kalman filter algorithm implemented in GPS, called the GPS Composite Clock, is a mature method to generate such a highly robust System Time. The algorithm estimates the time offsets of every individual clock to the so-called implicit mean, which is a common component in all clock estimates. The common component offers the functionality of System Time and is understandable as a weighted average out of all ensemble clock readings. GPS Composite Clock performance is analyzed by simulations of a “light ” GNSS configuration with 10 rubidium satellite clocks, including deterministic drift, six ground cesium clocks, and two ground active hydrogen masers. Besides evaluating the stability of an error-free clock constellation to define the regular performances, the behavior of the algorithm is investigated considering different operational scenarios: exclusion of clocks from the GNSS ensemble and occurrence of clock feared events (frequency steps in rubidium satellite clocks and ground H-masers)