[time-nuts] Paper about DCF77 performance

paul paulswedb at gmail.com
Wed Jun 13 20:02:32 UTC 2012


On 6/13/2012 3:46 PM, Daniel Engeler wrote:
> Hi,
>
> This is my first post to this mailing list. I wrote a paper about the
> German longwave time transmitter DCF77 which you may find interesting.
> Here is the link, unfortunately I am not allowed to post the full PDF:
>
> http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6202411
>
> "Performance Analysis and Receiver Architectures of DCF77
> Radio-Controlled Clocks", by Daniel Engeler
> IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control
> (May 2012)
>
> Abstract:
> DCF77 is a longwave radio transmitter located in Germany. Atomic
> clocks generate a 77.5-kHz carrier which is amplitude- and
> phase-modulated to broadcast the official time. The signal is used by
> industrial and consumer radio-controlled clocks. DCF77 faces
> competition from the Global Positioning System (GPS) which provides
> higher accuracy time. Still, DCF77 and other longwave time services
> worldwide remain popular because they allow indoor reception at lower
> cost, lower power, and sufficient accuracy. Indoor longwave reception
> is challenged by signal attenuation and electromagnetic interference
> from an increasing number of devices, particularly switched-mode power
> supplies. This paper introduces new receiver architectures and
> compares them with existing detectors and time decoders. Simulations
> and analytical calculations characterize the performance in terms of
> bit error rate and decoding probability, depending on input noise and
> narrowband interference. The most promising detector with
> maximum-likelihood time decoder displays the time in less than 60 s
> after powerup and at a noise level of Eb/N0 = 2.7 dB, an improvement
> of 20 dB over previous receivers. A field-programmable gate
> array-based demonstration receiver built for the purposes of this
> paper confirms the capabilities of these new algorithms. The findings
> of this paper enable future high-performance DCF77 receivers and
> further study of indoor longwave reception.
>
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Daniel
Might be a great read for us time-nuts. Unfortunately we have no access 
to the ieee site so it will go unread and appreciated.
Regards
Paul




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