Our relationship to time has always advanced in lockstep with technology.
Our ancestors cared about seasons, so created calendars tied to the movement of celestial bodies.
The first crude timepieces were created to regulate commerce.
Navigation on the open oceans led to better portable clocks.
Transportation - and the need to keep trains on time - led to watches.
The digital age has now forced us to track and parse time to billionths of a second.
Our networks and electronics don't care about absolute time; instead, they need a common time standard for signal processing, data buffers, and time-stamping of digital events.
Feeding this critical need is an extensive timing infrastructure consisting of clocks connected with synchronization links. And at the head end of this timing network is a global timing reference, UTC, which is carefully maintained by labs around the world and distributed via a RF signal from global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) like GPS.
But the need for more accurate timing has become even more critical for efficient distributed databases and cell networks; unlocking better spectrum efficiency; preventing power surges in data centers; and synchronizing cell towers to enable last-mile PNT over 5G for autonomous vehicles and industrial robotics.
And, while clocks have improved immensely in the past half century, GNSS timing accuracy plateaued a while ago.
The next generation technology can only advance with better synchronization.
Last Newsletter Theme: Ride the Light
Comments