[time-nuts] Timing Distribution in Mountainous Terrain

John Anderson gromitsprinkles at yahoo.com
Thu Sep 9 19:17:51 UTC 2010


Hmmm...I design such timing systems for Moto data radios, and 30nS sync is going to be very hard to achieve in reality.  Over a few hundred miles you're going to have OTA time of flight issues, temperature dependencies, etc.  Over the years this has been tried, usually with dismal success in the reliability department.  You might get the system working in the summer, and then when winter hits and snow builds up on the GPS antennas your network goes down.  Or, spring hit with a lot of atmospheric turbulance and you get all sorts of reflection / refraction effects, and trying to sync up time slots that close will be almost impossible.  It might work oneweek, and not the next.

What's your carrier freq?  In mountainous regions you'll probably have better luck at the lower end.  Please tell me you're not trying this at GHz freqs at higher, rocky elevations.  

You might find +-1uSec is a good number to shoot for is cost and reliability is a concern.  Just a suggestion.




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