Low SWAP Clocks with High-Stability and Reliability, Based on an Ensemble of MEMS Oscillators
Speakers
- Charles Barry, PhD (Luminous Cyber Corporation)
Description
Alternative PNT (Alt-PNT) systems are growing rapidly in importance and small, light, low-power clocks are becoming essential to this development. It is well-known now that while GPS/GNSS have pushed new technologies and economic growth, they also have significant vulnerabilities. Alt-PNT systems are required as layers with the GNSS to provide resilience. Just as ultra-stable atomic clocks on GNSS were central to its performance and adoption, ultra-stable clocks will also be needed for Alt-PNT. Moreover, Alt-PNT systems are being designed for drones and Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. This is a major driver for the development of low size, weight, and power (SWAP) clocks. The authors are developing an ensemble of micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) oscillators with stability better than most clocks with similar SWAP. Time scale ensembles have been used in timing at national metrology institutes (NMIs) for some time, including for the generation of International Atomic Time (TAI) and Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). MEMS oscillators have improved recently such that an ensemble of them can be more stable than similar Quartz oscillators or even chip-scale atomic clocks. In this paper we discuss the details of the performance of our ensemble clock, and how we have used artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML)-driven sensor fusion along with clock steering algorithms to optimize the performance of the ensemble compensating for the MEMS aging and the variations in temperature due to external environmental conditions, including those of LEO satellites. Temperature variations of LEO satellites can vary by +/- 40 Degrees C or more in a matter of 10-20 minutes, depending on the satellite’s thermal mass, power, reflectivity, insulation, spin and orbit, etc. AI/ML-driven sensor fusion compensates for the LEO environment. We include in this submission a Modified Allen Deviation (MDEV) plot of of the MEMS ensemble clock steered in real-time, showing the ensemble improvement (and the impact of the reference clock, in this case a traditional Rb-based GPSDO).