[time-nuts] Req: Decent GPS AntennaActive/Passive Recommendation

Jim Lux jimlux at earthlink.net
Mon Sep 16 09:48:01 EDT 2013


On 9/16/13 6:03 AM, David J Taylor wrote:

>
> I am thinking about exact time measurement - getting your PPS edge
> exactly on the nanosecond.  People can add in the length of the cable as
> an offset, so they must also need to enter any delay through any
> filters, mustn't they?
>
> Agreed that for position alone it doesn't matter as much.  It's the
> antenna's approximate position which will be measured.
>
> Your points about dispersion in the filter, and temperature coefficient
> of delay are good ones.
>


It's trying to get nice flat group delay in the filter that causes all 
the issues with Light Squared.  *small*, *inexpensive* brickwall 
bandpass filters tend not to have nice delay properties, or at least 
ones that are temperature stable.  Spectrum regulators know this, of 
course, and assign adjacent services accordingly.


If you're only worrying at the few nanosecond level, you probably don't 
have to take into account continental drift (periodic resurveys of 
location to account for several cm/year?) and solid earth tides (on the 
order of 30-50 cm).  And, really, for a lot of applications, you're 
interested in relative timing, so the solid earth tide shift of 1-2 ns 
every day isn't a big deal.





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