USING BUS LEVEL IRIG TIME CODE TRANSLATORS TO TIME TAG DATA AND SYNCHRONIZE MULTIPLE PROCESSING STATIONS

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 30-November 02, 1989 / Town & Country Hotel & Convention Center, San Diego, CaliforniaComputer based data acquisition and signal processing systems have evolved from computers developed for more generic applications. As a result of less technical origins, current computer systems have Real Time Clocks (RTC’s) that are relatively inaccurate and which can not be automatically synchronized to external time standards. The imbedded bus level time code processor modules described in this article in conjunction with Universal Time Coordinate (UTC) standard time receivers and standard InterRange Instrumentation Group time code signals provide a substitute source of time data, a source that overcomes the limitations of conventional Real Time Clock devices. To illustrate system synchronization with the use of bus level time code processors, a hypothetical multi-location, multi-processor data acquisition system is described which uses: 1> Global Positioning Satellite receivers to acquire UTC time, 2> InterRange Instrumentation Group (IRIG) time code as the local time distribution technique, and 3> bus level time code modules to extract time data from the IRIG time code. Each of these three elements (receivers, time code signal, bus level module) has various selection possibilities with an associated impact on system time accuracy. It is shown that, with selection care, 1 microsecond absolute time accuracy for each processor can be obtained and 1 millisecond accuracy is routinely available.International Foundation for TelemeteringProceedings from the International Telemetering Conference are made available by the International Foundation for Telemetering and the University of Arizona Libraries. Visit http://www.telemetry.org/index.php/contact-us if you have questions about items in this collection