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What’s New: A relatively recent paper from the International Telecommunications Union reinforcing the essentiality of time and synchronization.
Why It’s Important:
- Time and sync are fundamental to almost every technology. Most tech uses GPS as its time/sync source.
- GPS, as we never tire of saying, is easily denied or imitated (jammed or spoofed). This makes all the tech that uses it vulnerable.
- The more resilient and precise a nation’s time sources, the safer and more productive its technology and economy.
What To Know:
- The U.S. does not have a coherent nor resilient timing architecture.
- The National Timing Resilience and Security Act of 2018 requires the administration to establish a terrestrial timing capability to provide a complementary and backup service for GPS.
- The administration has requested Congress repeal the act.
- RNT Foundation published “A Resilient National Timing Architecture” and “A Resilient National Timing Architecture – Now for an RFP!” The second document outlines how the architecture could be easily and inexpensively achieved through government contracts for services.
Synchronization and the impact of UTC discontinuities
News 30 May 2023
Stefano Ruffini, Rapporteur, Question 13/15, ITU–T Study Group 15 and
Silvana Rodrigues, Senior Principal System Engineer, Huawei
Accurate synchronization is fundamental to effective telecommunication network operations.
Synchronization is more important than ever in today’s 5G networks and will be even more so in future mobile networks, where emerging radio technologies and network architectures support increasingly demanding use cases, such as time-sensitive networking for automated vehicles or controlling robots in smart factories.
